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Born in West Orange, New Jersey, and raised in the neighboring town of Denville, Laura San Giacomo caught the acting bug in high school and focused on her vocation while earning a fine arts degree at Carnegie-Mellon University. She made an impressive film debut playing a barmaid who has an affair with her sister's husband in the 1989 breakthrough independent film sex, lies and videotape, for which she won a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress. The film won the Palme D'Or grand prize at the Cannes Film Festival and earned the actress the prestigious New Generation Award from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. She is also well known to audiences for her portrayal of Julia Roberts' wisecracking best friend in the 1990 hit film Pretty Woman.

Last year, Giacomo starred as Jenifer Estess in the CBS telefilm Jenifer. She won rave reviews for her performance of a young woman struck by ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease) who becomes an activist and advocate to battle her illness.

Her numerous film credits also include the Australian western Quigley Down Under opposite Tom Selleck, Harold Ramis' Stuart Saves His Family, Under Suspicion opposite Liam Neeson, Once Around with Holly Hunter and Richard Dreyfuss, Nina Takes A Lover (in the title role) and Suicide Kings. She also starred in the award-winning With Friends Like These... a 1998 film produced by Penny Marshall and which also stars Elle Macpherson and Adam Arkin.

San Giacomo has also appeared on stage in the Los Angeles production of Wrong Turn At Lungfish, by George C. Scott and the off Broadway productions of Three Sisters, Italian-American Reconciliation and Beirut.

Her regional theater credits include Shakespeare's The Tempest, As You Like It and Romeo And Juliet and Beth Henley's Crimes Of The Heart.

On television, she starred in the highly rated Stephen King miniseries The Stand, the television movie For Their Own Good and cable's The Right To Remain Silent, for which she earned a Cable ACE nomination.