Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: NBCUniversal
Appearing on Law and Order: Special Victims Unit — or any installment of Dick Wolf’s ever-expanding Law and Order universe, for that matter — has practically been a rite of passage for actors of all stripes since it debuted in 1999. Not only has the procedural drama about sex crimes in New York City kept Mariska Hargitay employed for 25 years, but it has enlisted an extensive list of recognizable actors, from child stars to theater performers and Oscar winners, to help bring some of its wildest moments and characters to life. If you check an actor’s IMDb credits, SVU will most likely be there. Where else can you see Rita Moreno, Angela Lansbury, Alfred Molina, Bebe Neuwirth, and a pre–The Hangover Bradley Cooper entangled in one twisted crime tale?
As the longest-running live-action scripted TV series gears up to premiere its milestone 25th season, we’ve taken on the difficult task of ranking 25 of the show’s all-time great guest stars. And to narrow down the large pool, we’re not counting brief cameos and actors who had major arcs or were recurring stars at some point, so no Pablo Schreiber, who otherwise would’ve had a great case for being in the top three.
One of the many successful products of the Law and Order–to–Oscar nominee pipeline, Bradley Cooper isn’t the best performer in this aforementioned episode (that honor goes to Angela Lansbury; more on her later), nor was he the most famous at the time of its release. But his turn in this two-part crossover with Law and Order: Trial by Jury as Alfred Molina’s slimy defense attorney who helps cover up his crimes is very much worth noting.
The reliably controversial Kathy Griffin had an unforgettable stint on SVU, in which she plays a lesbian-rights group leader who hits on both Stabler and Benson while helping them find a rapist and killer targeting members of the community. The episode itself is weird and slightly dated, with the big twist being that Griffin’s character comes out as bisexual at a rally and then gets booed by the members of her group. But at one point, she nicknames Christopher Meloni’s Elliot Stabler “Assy McBigPants” and attempts to kiss Mariska Hargitay’s Olivia Benson while getting food, prompting Benson to say, “Whoa, that’s not on the menu,” which is nothing short of iconic.
Long before he became a two-time Oscar winner, Mahershala Ali made an impression on SVU audiences in this season 11 opener. He plays the perp du jour, a smug, unrepentant serial rapist who gets on Benson and Stabler’s radar after evidence leads them to believe that Stabler may have put the wrong man behind bars years prior. “Unstable” may not be the strongest episode the series has seen (Wentworth Miller’s turn as an asshole cop doesn’t really work), but Ali is a standout as the detestable antagonist.
After leaving The O.C., Mischa Barton was eager to take on grittier roles, and SVU ended up being some of her most notable work as a result. She plays Gladys Dalton, a young pregnant sex worker who witnessed the murders of two fellow sex workers and agrees to testify against the perp until falling down the stairs and giving birth prematurely. While the episode’s plot was fairly basic and predictable for the series, Barton gave an affecting performance and played a vital role in bringing out more of Benson’s maternal side, which would become a bigger topic for exploration as the series progressed.
One thing SVU has been successful at is taking former child stars and casting them in uncharacteristic roles that tested their acting abilities. What better to help Hilary Duff shed the Disney image she was associated with than a more mature role in Law and Order? In this ripped-from-the-headlines episode inspired by the Casey Anthony case, Duff is Ashlee Walker, a neglectful single mom who gets arrested for killing her 11-month-old daughter after her mother reports her to the police upon noticing that her trunk smelled like a decomposing body. When it’s discovered that Ashlee’s daughter wasn’t murdered but died of measles after being exposed to an unvaccinated child, the story, in typical SVU fashion, shifts into a larger exploration of the vaccine debate. Despite this pivot, Duff believably fills the shoes of a fictionalized Anthony and completely acts her ass off.
Once the ultimate 1990s teen heartthrob, James Van Der Beek — who played arguably the most unlikable character in Dawson’s Creek — makes for a top-tier offender in SVU. In “Father Dearest,” he portrays an arrogant man who preys on teenage girls conceived by a sperm donor by pretending to be their biological father and manipulating them into sleeping with him. This episode is a wild ride, and Van Der Beek plays the role of a sicko so well that he’ll have you side-eyeing him in every subsequent role. (See also: his equally unsettling guest spot in Criminal Minds.)
The OG Law and Order marked Sarah Paulson’s first ever acting gig in 1994, so it’s only fitting that she’d also make an appearance on SVU. As Anne Gillette, a spoiled rich girl who claims she’s being stalked to distract from the fact that she murdered her wealthy parents in order to secure their inheritance, Paulson portrays the character as just the right amount of unhinged. Paulson has carved out a niche for herself playing totally unstable characters, and in this episode that predates her work in shows like American Horror Story, she unsurprisingly gives the role her all.
Some acclaimed actors would typically find a soapy, overly dramatic network show like this one too lowbrow or beneath them (Sharon Stone later said she regretted taking a role in the series), but not Jeremy Irons. He’s first introduced in “Mask” as Captain Jackson, a sex therapist whose daughter is sexually assaulted by a masked assailant who may be one of his patients. When he returns later in “Totem,” he serves as the temporary replacement for B.D. Wong as the show’s consulting mental-health expert. Jackson is a complex and fascinating character whom Irons plays with a calm and detached nature, and he was such a huge asset to the series that it’s a shame he never became a recurring member of the ensemble.
The most recent entry in this list, Bradley Whitford had his second and more noteworthy guest stint in a season 24 episode directed by Mariska Hargitay. In “King of the Moon,” he plays a man with dementia who confesses to his wife’s murder, even though ADA Dominick Carisi (Peter Scanavino) and Benson believe that he couldn’t be the perp and are determined to prove it. Whitford gives perhaps the most nuanced and restrained performance we’ve seen from the series ever since it fell further into the soap-opera formula in recent years. Plus, his character flirting with Benson in the hospital by telling her that she has a “face like Jayne Mansfield,” Hargitay’s real-life mother, is one of the best pieces of dialogue the series has ever produced.
In 2015, New York legend Whoopi Goldberg made her SVU debut as a caseworker who gets put on trial for manslaughter after falsifying reports that led to the death of a child. Goldberg doesn’t have many scenes, but she makes the absolute most out of her screen time, especially when she takes the stand and delivers a powerful speech about how the deeply flawed system fails people not only in New York but across the country that makes you sympathize with her frustrations. This episode from the 2.0 (or post-Meloni) era felt like a brief return to form, and that’s thanks in large part to Goldberg’s scene-stealing turn that reminds us she’s an EGOT winner for a reason.
Bob Saget may have been America’s favorite TV dad in Full House, but he does a complete 180 in this episode as a husband who takes his jealousy too far. His character is Glenn, a choreographer who microchips his wife after suspecting her of having an affair, then kills her lover’s model wife and tries (but fails) to frame him for it. The outrageous plot then goes to the next level when his wife’s liver fails due to an existing condition and the unsterilized needle he used to insert the tracker, resulting in Glenn giving her a part of his own liver before heading off to prison. You can almost always count on big-name actors to portray SVU’s monstrous perps, but it’s especially refreshing (and sort of jarring) to watch the late actor play the bad guy in a role that’s drastically different from the one that made him a household name.
Of the hundreds of episodes released over the past two and a half decades, “Behave” ranks high as one of the best. A lot of credit for that goes to Jennifer Love Hewitt and her portrayal of Vicki Sayers, a woman who has been stalked and raped four times over the course of 15 years by a traveling medical salesman. It’s a powerful story centered around the ongoing rape-kit backlog across America, and Hewitt gives an underappreciated performance that makes you feel every single emotion — fear, pain, anxiety, relief — Vicki experiences as she endures the traumatic and exhaustive process. Her final confrontation with her rapist behind bars as she tells him, “Now I’ll always know where you are. Be a good boy. Behave yourself,” is as satisfying as it gets.
Just as it gave child stars the chance to prove that they can perform in serious material, SVU allowed for comedy stars to flex their dramatic muscles and play against type. There’s no better example than Martin Short, who guested as Sebastian Ballentine, a so-called psychic who kidnaps and rapes an 18-year-old girl and attempts to throw the cops off his scent by feeding them alarmingly specific information about the crime that instead turns him into a bigger suspect. Most know Short as the fun-loving jokester, but he’s downright menacing and terrifying here as he uses his comedic tools to bring depth to the despicable villain.
In the aforementioned star-studded Trial by Jury crossover, Angela Lansbury delivers a performance that stands miles apart from the rest. Lansbury has always had a knack for portraying sinister wealthy matriarchs, so the role of Eleanor Duvall, a mother who’s willing to go to any lengths in order to protect her serial-rapist son Gabriel (Alfred Molina, who didn’t make the cut for this list) who targets undocumented immigrant women, feels tailor-made for her. “Night” — and season six’s stacked guest lineup — was an embarrassment of riches, and Lansbury was the crème de la crème of the ensemble.
SVU is a ridiculous series that has never been afraid to take things to the extreme, to our extreme delight, and this episode is proof. Adored for his likable roles, Stamos charted new territory as a master manipulator and serial impregnator who pokes holes in condoms and fathers a minimum of 30 children all over the world as a result. The fittingly titled “Bang” is one of the most batshit episodes the show’s writers have ever concocted, and Stamos does a great job tapping into his dark side to play a sleazy and bone-chilling doctor. Stamos’s guest appearance here walked so that Nick Cannon could run.
Patricia Arquette has always been a chameleonic performer, and the series gave her a meaty role worthy of her talents with Jeanie, an aging sex worker who helps the SVU squad and FBI track down a client on a killing spree. The actress fully disappears into the part to the point where she’s barely recognizable, and the result is one of the show’s most gut-wrenching performances of the past decade. While guest stars tend to serve as background characters who exist only to advance the major story line, Jeanie is positioned as the central figure here as her personal story ends up feeling bigger than anything else.
Carol Burnett is a living Hollywood and TV legend, so the fact that she graced SVU with her presence — as the ultimate villain, no less — is of great importance and should be treated as such. In “Ballerina,” she portrays the titular former ballerina Bridget “Birdie” Sulloway, a black-widow-type serial killer who murdered all five of her rich husbands in order to inherit their wealth. Honorable mention goes to Matthew Lillard for his role as Birdie’s adopted nephew with whom she has a puzzling relationship, but this episode ultimately belongs to Burnett, whose fantastic work outside of her comedic wheelhouse earned her an Emmy nomination. Plus, the episode’s use of actual footage from Burnett’s days as a dancer only adds to her appearance’s impact.
Like a good, authentic New York show, SVU cast Cynthia Nixon as she was coming off the heels of another NYC hit, Sex and the City, in a role that was far removed from the tightly wound lawyer she became synonymous with. In the season-nine premiere, she plays Janis Donovan, a psychiatrist with dissociative identity disorder who is suspected of abusing and murdering her young daughter. Nixon seamlessly switches out of each identity and makes each distinctly their own as the episode maneuvers through its many twists and turns (of which there are many). The episode’s approach to DID is questionable — especially since we find out that Janis was faking it — but there’s no denying that Nixon gave a phenomenal performance that rose above the material she was given and rightfully earned her an Emmy.
When you hear the name Isabelle Huppert, SVU is probably the last thing that would come to mind. But lo and behold, the Oscar-nominated French actress once delivered a hell of a performance in the series while acting circles around her co-stars. In “Shattered,” Huppert plays Sophie, a distraught and “unbalanced” mother whose 8-year-old son dies after getting kidnapped off the street. As the episode escalates into a hostage situation involving some of the show’s main players during the peak SVU era (a.k.a. pre–Meloni departure), Huppert grows more unhinged by the minute and fully embodies her character’s dissociative nature. Anyone familiar with her work in films like The Piano Teacher and Greta knows that nobody does deranged better than Huppert, and this stint has a great case for not only being one of the show’s greatest guest stars but also one of her best performances, and we as a society don’t appreciate it nearly as much as we should.
Academy Award winner Marcia Gay Harden is a national treasure, so this list would be incomplete without the inclusion of her four-episode run across seasons seven, eight, 12, and 14. Her character, Dana Lewis (alias: Star Morrison), is first introduced in “Raw” as a member of a white-supremacist group behind a school shooting until she’s revealed to be an undercover FBI agent who would go on to cross paths with the SVU squad on several occasions and develop a friendship with Benson. Dick Wolf unnecessarily did her dirty in her final episode, where the shocking twist revealed that Dana had murdered her husband’s mistress and was sentenced to 25 years in prison — and even Harden agrees. But that doesn’t discredit the unbelievably fantastic Emmy-nominated work she did throughout her roller-coaster ride of a character arc.
SVU peaked when it booked the late, great Robin Williams for its bonkers 200th episode. As an anti-authoritarian engineer named Merritt Rook, he impersonates police officers to convince fast-food store managers to sexually assault their employees, puts the SVU squad through a hell of a journey, and eventually kidnaps Olivia Benson as his way of challenging authority. Williams nails the unstable yet charming Rook and makes for a brilliantly haunting villain, solidifying his versatility as an actor. SVU is at its absolute best when it lets its cast and plot run wild, which is why this episode and Williams’s universally acclaimed, Emmy-nominated performance will go down as an all-time classic.
Kyle MacLachlan has guest-starred on SVU twice, and both times he had fictional sons who died. The one we’re highlighting is the classic “Conscience,” which features the actor as Dr. Brett Morton, a psychiatrist whose 5-year-old son is killed by their 13-year-old neighbor, Jake. MacLachlan is memorable in everything he’s in, but especially here as he uses his charisma to make you absolutely root for him. What puts this appearance over the edge, though, is the fact that he gave us one of the show’s most iconic (and unintentionally funny) moments, in which he grabs a nearby court officer’s gun and shoots Jake in the courthouse after the unsympathetic child is found not guilty despite being a diagnosed sociopath. Then, after Brett ends up getting acquitted for Jake’s murder, he tells the SVU detectives that the difference between him and Jake is that he would never kill again while Jake would if he continued to live. It’s the series at its absolute finest and most unserious, and the genius casting of MacLachlan ensured that it would forever live rent-free in our minds.
When someone guest-stars in SVU more than once, it usually means that the casting directors were impressed. That’s the case with Sarah Hyland, who, after appearing in a season-three episode at the age of 10, returned seven years later and once again blew everyone away. In “Hothouse,” she plays Jennifer Banks, a competitive teenager whose prodigious prep-school roommate is murdered. Hyland does an exceptional job at portraying a sleep-deprived student who cracks under pressure after enduring abuse from her father, and her confession while suffering a drug-induced psychosis in the interrogation room is goosebump-inducing. In that one scene, Hyland puts on an acting master class that lands her on the Mount Rushmore of SVU guest stars.
Law and Order has featured a plethora of well-known rappers throughout its run (Ice-T has been in the main cast since the second season), but nobody has done it better than Ludacris. Introduced in season seven, he plays Darius, Detective Fin Tutuola’s (Ice-T) troubled nephew who rapes and murders his girlfriend’s employer and buries her infant son alive. Darius makes his return the following season for the trial, where he’s found not guilty after managing to get key pieces of evidence thrown out while representing himself and then gets disowned by Fin in the episode’s final moments. Ludacris hasn’t had many opportunities to tackle serious roles in his acting career, but he has an impactful onscreen presence here as a chilling perp you can’t help but feel a bit sorry for. His character stirred chaos within the SVU unit that had a lasting effect, and Ludacris’s impressive performances, especially in the courtroom scenes, make him more than deserving of a spot in the SVU guest-star Hall of Fame.
Although she now appears in Law and Order: Organized Crime on a more regular basis, Ellen Burstyn has only been on SVU once. The only entry in this list not directly involved in a crime, Burstyn plays Stabler’s estranged bipolar mother, Bernadette, in a 2008 episode that finally gave viewers more insight into Stabler’s backstory and difficult upbringing, including the physical and emotional abuse he experienced at the hands of his father. In their few yet mighty scenes, Burstyn and Meloni have fantastic chemistry, which we’re lucky to get to witness more of in OC. The beloved actress’s achingly devastating performance is easily the finest in the show’s long history and earned her a well-deserved Emmy Award that solidified her as one of a few actors with a Triple Crown of Acting. In “Swing,” Burstyn does what any great guest performer should accomplish in a series, which is steal every scene she’s in and make you remember it for decades to come.