![[Photo of Renee as Gabrielle]](gaby.jpg)
Renee O'Connor was born February 15, 1971 in Houston, Texas, and raised in the small city of Katy, just west of Houston. She began her acting studies in 1983 at Houston's Alley Theatre, and later attended Houston's High School of the Performing and Visual Arts.
Her professional acting career began in 1989 with starring roles in the serials Teen Angel and Match Point, which were both featured on the Disney Channel's Mickey Mouse Club. That same year, she moved to Los Angeles, where she soon landed a bit role in the Tales from the Crypt segment "The Switch", which marked Arnold Schwarzenegger's directorial debut. Unfortunately, the footage with her was cut from the final film.
Renee went on to play Jessica Adams in the TV movie adaptation of Danielle Steele's Changes and subsequently landed a starring role in the NBC movie The Flood, in which she played one of a group of campers whose lives are suddenly endangered. She later guest-starred as Rebecca Sloan, the daughter of a murdered couple, in the NYPD Blue episode "Oscar, Meyer, Weiner".
Renee later co-starred with Ellen Burstyn and Sheryl Lee in the ABC-TV movie Follow the River, in which she played a young woman captured by Shawnee Indians. Set in 1755, the drama was based on a true story. Afterwards, she starred opposite James Garner as a self-obsessed actress who hires Rockford as her bodyguard in The Rockford Files: Blessing in Disguise. Broadcast in May 1995, this was the second of Garner's two recent Rockford Files reunion movies for CBS-TV. O'Connor's most recent feature film role was that of Julia Wilkes in Disney's The Adventures of Huck Finn, which also starred Elijah Wood.
O'Connor first piqued the interest of MCA-TV executive producers Rob Tapert and Sam Raimi when an audition won her the role of the young Deianeira in their two-hour Action Pack made-for-TV adventure movie Hercules and the Lost Kingdom. Her performance opposite Hercules star Kevin Sorbo so spellbound them that they signed her for a starring role in Darkman II: The Return of Durant, a direct-to-video film released in July 1995, in which she played Laurie Brinkman. Laurie's brother is a scientist who is killed by Darkman's nemesis, Robert G. Durant.
Renee now stars as Gabrielle in the Tapert-Raimi syndicated adventure series Xena: Warrior Princess. Gabrielle is a spirited young woman who adores Xena and dares to follow the warrior princess in a quest for a more exciting life.
Renee is single and enjoys jazz dancing, horseback riding, rock climbing, kickboxing, jogging, and weight training. When not in Auckland, New Zealand, where Xena is filmed, she makes her home in Los Angeles.
Renee has five namesakes in my life, all of them teddy bears: