Lucy Lawless, born Lucille Frances Ryan, was born and raised in Mount Albert, New Zealand.
Lawless is the descendent of an Irish criminal, sent to New Zealand to serve out a criminal sentence.[1] Apparently, her ancestor kept the faith because Lawless was raised a Catholic. She said:
I have five brothers and one sister. We're this big, sprawling Irish Catholic family. I don't live that far from any of them.[2]
Throughout her acting career, the morality and guilt inherent in the Catholic religion would rise up and strike her. For example, she expressed feeling strange about acting out a "horror/lesbian vampire" scene during the filming of her show Xena: Warrior Princess. She said:
That was a weird one. I grew up Catholic and so we thought we had the edge over vampires because there was always a crucifix handy.[3]
However, something interesting popped up during the research of Lawless' article. She said in response to a question about reviving her singing career by participating on the TV show, Celebrity Duets:
It lit a fire under my belly. I'd kind of lost my religion, acting and everything. So when the possibility of singing with Smokey Robinson [on Celebrity Duets] came up, I just leaped at it.[4]
Lost her religion? There's a story there. Unfortunately, she didn't elaborate during the interview, but I think it's safe to say she's a lapsed Catholic.
Going the political distance
Lawless is majorly political. Just look at her Twitter feed. It's an endless stream of factoids, calls to arms and appeals to politicians. She's a political activist, putting herself in danger and on the front lines against corporatocracy and planetary disintegration.
In 2012, Lawless and a group of activists boarded an oil exploration ship as it was docked in a New Zealand port out of protest, spent over three days on the vessel, and was ultimately arrested and charged with burglary. She ended up pleading guilty to criminal trespassing.[5]
She wrote a political manifesto of sorts, outlining her political views. They are quite liberal. She said that she chose not to become a U.S. citizen because she didn't like the Bush administration, that Obama "inherited… a monstrous snowball of problems," and discussed her family's green lifestyle including their beehives and compost piles, and said:
I remember a gasoline company that posted a $6 billion profit in the wake of the first Iraq War. I thought, What are you going to do with that, buy a new planet? There's no planet B.[6]
Her liberal views also extend to gay marriage. She vocally opposed California's Prop 8 when it was a raging debate in 2008. Plus, she made some waves in the gay community when she announced after Xena ended that she thought her character was a lesbian.[7]
The political issues that are important to Lawless are clearly central in her life. This princess is quite the warrior.
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