An attractive, energetic, hazel-eyed performer, Sharon Lawrence studied journalism in college, intending to follow in the footsteps of her anchorman father, but the former Raleigh, North Carolina Junior Miss opted for the bright lights instead (with her teachers' blessings). By her own admission not the best dancer or actress, she propelled herself by sheer determination, eventually acting opposite Anthony Quinn (a national tour of "Zorba'), Joel Grey (her Broadway debut in "Cabaret") and Topol (tour and subsequent Broadway run of "Fiddler on the Roof"), not to mention working with Dezi Arnaz Jr. and Georgia Engel in regional theater. While playing Tzeitel in "Fiddler", Lawrence, feeling all her detailed emotional work was lost to most of the house, decided to head to Hollywood and revel in the intimacy a camera could capture. Her TV debut came as a guest on Steven Bochco's ABC divorce court series "Civil Wars", and the producer recalled her when he was casting his controversial 1993 police drama series "NYPD Blue" (ABC).
Lawrence was not a regular that first season but did deliver a few lines as a day player in the premiere, and the producers liking what they saw brought her back (for 17 of the first 22 episodes). Her role as Sylvia (she didn't actually get a surname until the eighth episode), the earnest, no-nonsense assistant district attorney, actually evolved from a part originally written for a man, and though short on glamour, heated up romantically with her affair and eventual marriage to older tough cop Andy Sipowicz (Dennis Franz). Offers poured in allowing her to stretch as an actress in five TV-movies and one miniseries from 1995-96, but it was a guest spot on "Caroline in the City" in 1996 that convinced NBC she could headline her own sitcom. "Fired Up" (1997-98), starring Lawrence as a flamboyant executive forced by downsizing to go into business with her former secretary, debuted in the spring and won a spot in the network's fall line-up. While enjoying the change-of-pace, over-the-top comedy, she remained on "NYPD" in a reduced capacity due to Sylvia's motherhood.
Lawrence's feature output has been slight. She appeared in "The Only Thrill" (1997), starring Diane Keaton and Sam Shepard, and finished her second film "Gossip" (2000), in which she plays a detective investigating a rape and the ensuing suicide of the victim. She is first and foremost a creature of TV, and when "Fired Up" fizzled, "NYPD Blue" was happy to up Sylvia's profile again, this time as a working mother and supportive spouse to Andy confronting his health problems, but when the actress was ready to broaden her horizons again, her character was dramatically killed off in 1999. She also returned to the New York stage for the first time since arriving in Hollywood, acting in "Tongue of a Bird" (1999), reprising a role she had first played at Los Angeles' Mark Taper Forum.
If she had failed in her attempt to carry a series, the networks had not given up on her yet in comedy. CBS cast her in "Ladies Man" (1999-2000) as the pregnant wife of powerhouse stage actor Alfred Molina, a long-suffering male in the midst of his extended family of five women who hopes against hope that his new baby will be a boy. Another series, the horror drama "Wolf Lake," also fizzed in 2001. Meanwhile, on the stage, she made a rwelcome eturn to Broadway, starring as Velma Kelly in the revival of "Chicago in the summer of 2001, and in September 2002 she played Michelle in "Under the Blue Sky" by David Eldridge at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles, then, along with a string of suporting roles in features, Lawrence scored big with a recurring stint as the suburban housewife-turned-call girl Maisy Gibbons in the first season of the hit primetime drama "Desperate Housewives" (ABC, 2004 - ).