Career
Williams began her career on television, with a second-season role in an episode of the CBS series Beauty and the Beast and as the first victim of the Hillside Stranglers in NBC's made-for television film The Case of the Hillside Stranglers. Her first feature film appearances were in Zapped Again! (1990) and There Goes My Baby (1994) opposite ER's Noah Wyle. She also appeared in The Young Riders in 1991. Also in 1994, she played Jennifer Stolpa in the television movie Snowbound: The Jim and Jennifer Stolpa Story. She guest starred on the hit Fox teen drama Party of Five in its first season in 1994 as a woman named Annie Alcott. She also guest starred in the second season Law & Order episode "Sisters Of Mercy" as a sexually abused meth addict in 1992.
Beginning with Episode 11 titled "Moon Cross" (aired on February 5, 1995) of the science fiction series Earth 2, Williams appeared in a multiple episode story arc in the role of Mary, a human orphan raised on another planet by the indigenous alien species known as the Terrians.
She appeared in 1996 in the 19th episode of the fourth and final season of the TV series Picket Fences as an Amish woman who was raped.
In 1997, she took her most prominent role as Lindsay Dole Donnell on the ABC legal drama The Practice. She appeared in the series The Lyon's Den and Hack, as well as two episodes of Scrubs. Williams appeared as Dr. Natalie Durant on the NBC television show Medical Investigation which began in the fall of 2004 and ran for 20 episodes before being cancelled. Also in 2004, she starred in the television movie A Boyfriend for Christmas.
In 2000, Williams starred in the TV Movie Flowers for Algernon, based on the novel/short story by Daniel Keyes.
In May 2007, she portrayed Holly Lauren/Kathleen Shaw in the Law & Order: Criminal Intent sixth season finale episode, "Renewal"; as a neighbor and later girlfriend to Detective Mike Logan (Chris Noth), her character dies towards the end of the episode. In August 2008, Williams was cast in a lead role as psychologist Dr. Gillian Foster in the Fox series Lie to Me, which ran for three seasons and ended in 2011.
In April 2011, she was cast in a guest role as Shelley Chamberlain, a grieving mother on a killing spree in the CBS series Criminal Minds.
In October 2011, she was cast in a guest role as a kidnapped child's mother called Elizabeth Flint in the CBS series The Mentalist.
Read more about this topic: Kelli Williams
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“John Brown’s career for the last six weeks of his life was meteor-like, flashing through the darkness in which we live. I know of nothing so miraculous in our history.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“He was at a starting point which makes many a man’s career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swings and makes his point or else is carried headlong.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“The 19-year-old Diana ... decided to make her career that of wife. Today that can be a very, very iffy line of work.... And what sometimes happens to the women who pursue it is the best argument imaginable for teaching girls that they should always be able to take care of themselves.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)