Angela Michelle Harmon is an American actress and model. She won Seventeen’s modelling contest in 1987 at age 15, signed with IMG Models, and appeared on covers for magazines such as Cosmopolitan and Esquire.
Her acting breakthrough came with the role of Ryan McBride on Baywatch Nights (1995–1997), and she earned four Screen Actors Guild Award nominations for playing Abbie Carmichael on Law & Order (1998–2001).
Harmon also appeared in a number of film roles, which notably include Barbara Gordon in Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker (2000) and Ronica Miles in Agent Cody Banks (2003).
She won the Gracie Award for Outstanding Female Actor in a Leading Role in a Drama Series or Special in 2012 and the People’s Choice Award for Favorite Cable TV Actress in 2015.
She has starred in a number of Lifetime network’s original projects, which include the biographical special Video Voyeur (2002) and the critically-acclaimed feature Living Proof (2008). In 2021, she signed an exclusive multi-picture deal with Lifetime.
Why did Angie Harmon leave law and order?
Harmon left Law & Order to concentrate on her film career, saying that she preferred working in film to television.
According to a 2001 report from Variety, “Production insiders said Harmon wants to focus on building a feature career.” She certainly accomplished that, and one of the first film roles she got after leaving “Law & Order” was as Ronica Miles in “Agent Cody Banks.”
When promoting that film, she did an interview with Cinema Confidential where she spoke more at length about wanting to leave the procedural: “I left ‘Law & Order’ because I really honestly did want to do movies and did want to be a movie star since I was a little girl.”
She also felt as though she had reached a natural stopping point with her “Law & Order” character, stating, “There has to become a point where I can’t constantly be saying to Jack McCoy, ‘Why don’t we do this … As an actor, you’re trying to stand up for the integrity of your character and it’s hard.”
However, leaving “Law & Order” was about more than just wanting to pursue other projects. She was also recently married around this time and wanted to be more available to spend time with her husband, Jason Sehorn.
She would go on to say, “Here’s kind of my motto — if you’re not happy at home, you’re not happy anywhere else. So, he and my marriage come first, and when he’s in football season, I don’t work.