Alana de La Garza - "Law & Order"

Plays: ADA Connie Rubirosa, who succeeded the murdered Alexandra Borgia (Annie Parisse) as Jack McCoy’s (Sam Waterston) second chair.

About her character: "She has her opinions, and she’s not afraid to share them with whoever will listen. There’s a real fun energy that Connie has with Jack that’s really exciting and fun to play off. It’s almost like good cop, bad cop in a lot of situations. He’ll either take the tough-guy position or vice versa."

Rubirosa’s back story: "All I do know about Connie is that she worked with career criminals, in and out of jails consistently. That was her background, and so, when she comes to work for Jack and [DA] Arthur Branch, she’s kind of coming into it with a lot of history as far as the legalities of things, but this is new for her, prosecuting these cases that have all these twists and turns."

Where you saw her before: De la Garza made a (bloody) splash last season on "CSI: Miami" as Horatio Caine’s beautiful, ill-fated bride Marisol. Her first big break was playing Rosa Santos on the daytime drama "All My Children." Later, she guest starred on shows like "JAG," "Las Vegas" and "Two and a Half Men" and was a lead on the series "The Mountain." Her film credits include the 2006 romantic comedy "Mr. Fix It," opposite David Boreanaz.

How she got the "L&O" role: "I’d love to say, ’Oh, I was requested,’ but I actually went to kind of a general call, and then, luckily, it was for Dick and the other producers, and he said, ’How are you on cold reads?’ I said, ’I think I’m about to find out.’ I’m not sure what role I was reading for, but it was a detective role, and I want to say it was for ’Criminal Intent.’ ... Then, I came back in as the lawyer."

Why she lopped off those long, beautiful tresses she’d had practically since birth: "It was just time for a change. It was time for me to play a different type of role, because being a damsel in distress is OK, but I really kind of longed to play a strong female, who ... helps the damsel in distress. (Last pilot season, she auditioned for three lawyer roles that she didn’t get.) I was watching something on TV, and there was another woman with big, wavy locks, and I looked at her and thought, ’Would I hire her to be a lawyer? I wouldn’t. She doesn’t look like it.’ So I talked it over with my fiance, of course, and literally the next day, I chopped it off — 13 inches. ... This is kind of freeing and liberating."

On playing Marisol in "CSI: Miami": "I was supposed to do one or two episodes. And after my first day working, David Caruso actually said, ’Listen, she needs to come back and have a story line,’ which was so nice. I’m so grateful for it. ... I just had fun with it. Every time, they said, I think they’re going to try a relationship with you two, we would go, ’Oh, no, no.’ I thought, I’m definitely dying for sure. I wonder what lake I’m going to turn up in. That was the joke, I’d pick up a script and say, am I dead yet? No, not this script. ... Horatio’s got to be sexy and single."