Name at birth: Lucille Frances Ryan

The TV show Xena, Warrior Princess, starring Lucy Lawless as a campy barbarian-with-a-bosom, was a surprise TV hit in 1996. (The Xena series began as a spinoff of the fantasy series Hercules, which starred Kevin Sorbo.) The series ran until 2001 and made the New Zealand actress a TV star as well as a favorite among America's lesbian community (thanks to Xena's ambiguous relationship with her sidekick, Gabrielle). Lawless has starred in feature films including the animated Hercules and Xena: The Battle for Mount Olympus (1998), the blockbuster Spider-Man (2002, in a very brief cameo) and the comedy Eurotrip (2004). She had a recurring role as the Cylon newshound D'Anna Biers (aka Number Three) in the TV series Battlestar Galactica from 2005-07. After singing on the TV show Celebrity Duets in 2006 she began a second career as a part-time club singer, and released the CD Come 2 Me in 2007. In 2010 she began starring as Lucretia, the wife of a gladiator-owning Roman, in the cable TV sword-and-sandals series Spartacus: Blood and Sand.