Lawless, the fifth of seven children (five brothers and one sister), was born in Mount Albert, New Zealand. She is the daughter of Julie and Frank Ryan, who was a banker and mayor. Lawless began acting in secondary school. At Auckland University, she studied foreign languages for a year. She dropped out and left for Europe with her boyfriend, Garth Lawless, to travel to Germany and Switzerland. Read more...

At 19, Lawless became pregnant with Garth's child. In 1988, they married in Kalgoorlie, Australia. They returned to New Zealand and had a daughter, Daisy Lawless (born July 15, 1988). The couple divorced in 1995. Lawless married Xena executive producer, Robert Tapert, on March 28, 1998. Lawless and Tapert have two sons: Julius Robert Bay Tapert (born October 16, 1999) and Judah Miro Tapert (born Read more...

Lawless had a guest role in New Zealand TV series Shark in the Park (1990), around the same time as future Xena actor Karl Urban.

In 1994, Lawless appeared in "Hercules and the Amazon Women," the television pilot for Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. In that episode, she played a man-hating Amazon named Lysia. She went on to play another character, Lyla, in the first season episode "As Darkness Read more...