I Love the ‘90s is more than our favorite VH1 show…it’s also pretty much our entire view of that heady decade. This was a decade of a chill, saxophone-playing president, a major tech boom, and no real major global conflicts. It was also, if we say so ourselves, a great decade for movies and television.
How well do you really remember the stars of those shows and series, though? Here’s a great example: Laura San Giacomo was everywhere in the ‘90s, starring in Pretty Woman alongside Julia Roberts before headlining the amazingly successful sitcom Just Shoot Me! Back then, she was one of the most recognizable stars in the world. However, she was recently spotted by the paparazzi, and she seems completely unrecognizable.
Where was Giacomo spotted? How did her career get its start, and what has she been up to lately? Keep reading to find out!
The other star of ‘Pretty Woman’
Admittedly, Laura San Giacomo is not exactly a household name…at least, not these days. However, in the ‘90s, she shot to fame largely because of her role in Pretty Woman. That movie cemented both Julia Roberts and Richard Gere as bankable movie stars and made celebs of everyone else with a major part, which certainly included Giacomo.
Just what part was that, you ask? She played Kit De Luca in Pretty Woman, someone who was best friends with Julia Roberts’ character, Vivian Ward. Thanks to the success of this film, Giacomo became a more bankable star as well. And it didn’t take her long to parlay her new fame into a major television role.
A major TV star
Are you ever surprised by which sitcoms slip through the cracks? For example, there are still plenty of fans of ‘90s shows like Seinfeld and Frasier. However, far too few people remember Just Shoot Me!, the hilarious sitcom starring David Spade. And, you guessed it: the other major star of that show was Laura San Giacomo.
The general premise of the show was that her character was a hotshot journalist who ended up having to work for Blush, her father’s fashion magazine. The series was a success, going for a whopping seven seasons. It was also arguably Giacomo’s best work, and her powerful performance earned her a Golden Globe nomination.
Looking great in her ‘60’s
Laura San Giacomo didn’t exactly disappear after the ‘90s. She went on to appear in a number of other great shows, including Grey’s Anatomy, NCIS, and Veronica Mars. However, she was never quite as prominent in later decades…after all, major roles in breakout films and insanely popular TV shows don’t come around all that often!
That’s part of why the recent photos of Giacomo have made such a splash. She’s somebody that many fans hadn’t thought about for years or even decades, and at 62, she now looks completely different than she did in the ‘90s. Of course, different doesn’t mean bad: with her platinum blonde hair, cargo pants, creamy shirt, and stylish necklace, she is both stylish and beautiful, emitting the undeniable aura of a major star.
How her career began
You now know a bit more about Laura San Giacomo’s career heyday as she bounced from starring in Pretty Woman to headlining her own sitcom. However, do you know how her own career stardom began? While she starred in previous projects, she became a major Hollywood celeb in 1989, one year before the release of Pretty Woman.
1989 was when the movie Sex, Lies, and Videotape hit theaters. Giacomo starred in the film, and while she had starred in minor TV and theatrical roles before, this sexy, transgressive movie put her on the map. Because of her performance, Giacomo won the Los Angeles Film Critics Association New Generation Award and the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. On top of that, she was nominated for both a BAFTA and a Golden Globe.
Starting a family and using her voice to help others
Aside from dazzling us on the big screen and the small screen, Laura San Giacomo found time to do a few other important things. The most important was starting a family: in 1990, she married Cameron Dye, but they divorced in 1998 after having a son. Soon after, she married her current husband, Matt Adler, in 2000, and they have been living happily ever after since then.
Sadly, Mason (who is now 29) has cerebral palsy. Giacomo does the best she can to take care of him, and doing so has helped her learn much more about this frightening medical condition. She now uses her knowledge to advocate for more research into cerebral palsy, like she did with Oprah in 2016. Additionally, Giacomo became the board secretary of Momentum Wheels (a wheelchair charity) in 2021. In our book, that makes her the best kind of celebrity: one who uses her voice, power, and platform to help others.