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A native Californian, attractive
brunette Kelli Williams achieved a measure of small screen stardom as
junior partner Lindsay Dole in the award-winning legal drama "The
Practice" (ABC, 1997-2003). Playing a recent law school graduate
negotiating the perils and pitfalls of defending clients while her best
friend serves as the prosecutor, the actress brought a strong sense of
naïveté tempered with the appropriate chutzpah. Although co-star Camryn
Manheim had the flashier role, Williams proved just as capable, whether
negotiating an inter-office romance or taking on her former mentor in
court. Her role has since grown tremendously, showcasing an even more
impressive range of Kelli's acting abilities.
Williams began her acting career on the small screen, scoring a recurring
role as the girlfriend of Christopher Daniel Barnes in the NBC sitcom "Day
By Day" in 1989. Movie (TV/Film) roles followed, including her debut in
"The Case of the Hillside Strangler" (NBC, 1989). She landed another
recurring role as a girlfriend, this time as the high school sweetheart to
the King in the ABC drama series "Elvis" (1989-90) before graduating to
leads as a teenager coping with the end of an abusive relationship in "But
He Loved Me" (CBS, 1991). Williams continued to hone her craft, appearing
on stage in the comedy "Wrong Turn at Lungfish" (1992-93), alongside
George C Scott and Tony Danza. After a string of guest appearances and
other TV-movies (i.e., opposite Neil Patrick Harris in the based-on-fact
"Snowbound: The Jon and Jennifer Stolpa Story", CBS 1994), the actress
landed her first regular series role as an ambitious but untrained intern
at a tabloid in the short-lived CBS drama "New York News" (1995). In the
meantime, she had begun to land occasional film roles, including a
prototypical flower child named Sunshine in "There Goes My Baby" (1994)
and as the wife of a scientist (Jeremy Piven) in "Wavelength/E=mc2"
(1995), although neither part was as three-dimensional as her role on "The
Practice". Most recently, Kelli co-starred along with Mathew Modine in
"Flowers For Algernon" (ABC, 2000). |