Lucy Lawless

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 pilot film for Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. In the episode, she played a man-hating Amazon named Lysia. Her key role was given to her when she was asked to play a villainous warrior woman named Xena in an episode entitled "The Warrior Princess" which aired in March 1995. Vanessa Angel had originally been cast in the role, but fell ill and was unable to travel to New Zealand for shooting. To differentiate between Xena and the similar Lysia, Lawless' hair was dyed black. Xena subsequently returned in two more episodes of Hercules' first season.

Celebrity Big Brother
Celebrity Big Brother 2007 was the fifth series of the United Kingdom reality television series Celebrity Big Brother, a spin-off of Big Brother. The series was broadcast on Channel 4 in the UK (also on S4C in Wales), and involved a number of celebrities referred to as 'housemates', who live in the Big Brother House with no contact with the outside world. In recent series, the show's producers have offered celebrities money to appear on Celebrity Big Brother.

Celebrity Big Brother 2007 started on 3 January 2007, and ran for 26 days. The launch show peaked at 8.2 million viewers, making it the second most-watched launch in Big Brother history. It was the first Celebrity Big Brother series to be shown in the 16:9 widescreen format and the final Celebrity series to be held in the Elstree compound with the regular series later in the year being the final one overall.

Big Brother
Big Brother is a reality television format. In each series, which lasts for around three months, a number of people (normally fewer than fifteen at any one time) live toge-ther full-time in a "Big Brother House", isolated from the outside world but under the continuous gaze of television cameras. The house-mates try to win a cash prize by avoiding periodic, usually publicly-voted, evictions from the house. The "real life soap" was invented by the Dutchman John de Mol and developed by his production company, Endemol. It has been a prime-time hit in almost 70 different countries.