Tamara Tunie Movies and Career Information

Tamara Lou Tunie (born 14 March 1959) is an American actress. She is best known for her portrayal of attorney Jessica Griffin on the CBS soap opera As the World Turns, and medical examiner Melinda Warner on the NBC police drama Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. From 2000 to 2007 (and again briefly in 2009), she appeared on both series simultaneously. Tunie was born in McKeesport, Pennsylvania and grew up in Homestead, the daughter of Evelyn (née Hawkins) and James W. Tunie. She was raised in the funeral home of her father, who worked as an undertaker. Tunie went to Carnegie Mellon University for acting and graduated in 1981. Tunie is known to nighttime audiences for her roles on detective crime dramas. She played the recurring role of Lillian Fancy on NYPD Blue from 1994 to 1997. She briefly appeared as Alberta Green in the first season of 24 and played a power lesbian in an episode of Sex and the City. Tunie joined the cast of As the World Turns as Jessica Griffin in 1986, and was involved in a number of front-burner storylines including an interracial romance and later marriage (a subject that was, in the 1980s, less commonplace on soaps than it is today), and her character's