Kelli Giddish life and career: The phone call that changed the life of All My Children and Law and Order: SVU star | Explainer

All My Children‘s Kelli Giddish first graced our television screens as tough-talking detective Amanda Rollins in Law and Order: Special Victims Unit in 2011.

After leaving the series, she delighted fans by announcing she was returning in 2024 for season 26 of the popular show.

Behind the scenes, the actress is a proud mum of three children, including two with first husband. Giddish welcomed her third child last year with second husband Beau Richards when she was 43.

READ MORE: TV star’s special relationship with co-star and ‘partner for life’

Kelli Marie Giddish was born on April 13, 1980, in the US state of Georgia.

She credited her family for encouraging her early forays into acting, telling Smashing Interviews Magazine in 2021, “My mum was a teacher, and at her school, there was a lady named Yatesy Harvey, and she ran a community theatre.”

“My mum was like, ‘Kelli, my friend is bothering me about having you audition for a play, if that’s something you want to do’,” she recalled.

Giddish acted in community theatre as a child, then in high school and college, again with her parents’ backing.

READ MORE: How SVU star Mariska Hargitay overcame traumas to help others

“I actually wanted to study physics or astronomy or something like that, but my parents sat me down in high school in my senior year and said, ‘Are you sure you don’t want to do theatre?’ I said, ‘You guys are not supposed to be saying that!'”

Giddish said her parents regularly travelled to Indiana to see her in “every college performance [she] was in” and also supported her eventual move to New York City, where she earned “$40 a night” working in restaurants to make ends meet.

Her first break came when she won a role in a Broadway play opposite Farrah Fawcett.

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In 2005, she was cast as Donna Harvey in the long-running soap opera All My Children.

She told Smashing Interviews Magazine her first thought on winning the role was, “Oh, God. I get to eat steak now!”

“I was so happy. Really, it’s a very fertile training ground for what I have come to do now,” she said.

“Working on a network TV show is just a gruelling schedule and I learned how to navigate that on the soap when I’m doing 90 pages a day of dialogue and all the stuff you have to memorise and really get it right on one take,” she said.

After leaving the show in 2007, she appeared in numerous movies and TV shows, including some long-running series, and even an episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent, when she got a call about a new role in the hit TV crime drama Law and Order: Special Victims Unit.

“I was living in Los Angeles at the time. I had just finished a show called Chase,” she said.

“I was figuring out what I wanted to do next [when] I got a call that Chris Meloni was leaving the show, and they were looking for maybe a male and a female to step in his shoes,” she recalled.

“I said, ‘Oh, that sounds pretty interesting.’ I’d lived in New York, and I loved New York, so I came out here to screen test.”

After a screen test with the show’s star Mariska Hargitay, watched on by the series creator Dick Wolf, she won the role of Detective Amanda Rollins.

The character, which debuted in 2011 during series 13, started off wet behind the ears but eager to learn from Hargitay’s character Olivia Benson.

Rollins became key to many storylines, including her own shooting and a murder charge. Another dealt with her character’s previous sexual assault.

Other storylines included her character’s gambling addiction, problems with her drug-addicted father and sister, her relationship with police partner, Detective Nick Amaro, played by Danny Pino, and eventual marriage to assisted district attorney Sonny Carisi.

Along the way, she became a fan favourite.

But after 12 seasons, Giddish took to Instagram in August 2022 to announce she was leaving the show, writing, “I wanted to address the chatter I’ve seen online and let everyone know that this will, indeed, be my last season on Law & Order: SVU.”

“Playing Rollins has been one of the greatest joys and privileges of my life. I’ve been so fortunate to be a part of the Law & Order family for the last 12 years. There is simply no other character on TV like Rollins,” she continued.

While her character retired from the force to take up a teaching position at university, she went on to make several guest appearances in episodes of SVU and its spin-off Law and Order: Organised Crime, before it was announced this year she was returning to the show that made her a household name.

Her character will not work in SVU but in a different division of the New York Police Department.

In real-life, Giddish married artist Lawrence Faulborn in June 2015 after the two reportedly dated for five years.

They have two children, Ludo, who was born in October 2015, and Charlie, who arrived in November 2018.

The marriage reportedly ended soon after but Giddish kept the news private, only telling Smashing Interviews Magazine in October 2021 she had “recently been divorced” and was “very excited” to be “engaged again.”

Giddish announced on Instagram in February 2022 that she had married second husband, Beau Richards, three months earlier.

“Happy beyond words to have met and married my love, my man, my sweet beau 11/7/21. @botorious you are my light, and the most supreme stepfather Ludo and Charlie could ask for,” she wrote.

The actress announced via Instagram in June 2023 they were soon to welcome a son.

She waited until September to reveal Odie had arrived on June 20, 2023.

‘My husband and I welcomed Oldie Richards on June 20 and we are so in love and so very grateful,” she wrote.

“Oldie, you’ve brought immeasurable joy to me and your daddy and your two brothers (and your grandparents and aunts and uncles!) You wake up smiling and the light you bring to each moment is truly incredible.”

Giddish, now 44, is believed to have a net worth of about $US12 million (approx. $18.4 million), mostly derived from the show.

She is a sports fan and has posted photos at New York Rangers ice hockey games and New York Knicks basketball matches.

She also appears to be a fan of boating, with her husband recently tagging her in a photo at the helm of a boat, and he has also shared videos of her singing and playing guitar in their New York home.

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