The cast of Law & Order: SVU: Then and now

 

Stephanie March (Alexandra Cabot)

Stephanie March played ADA Alexandra Cabot, a hotshot lawyer who pursued justice with fervor. Her character also inspired many fan theories surrounding sexual tension with Olivia Benson. March officially left the show after season 5, but she continued to make cameo appearances.

As with her replacement Diane Neal, SVU provided an early breakout role for March, whose previous acting credits included an episode of Early Edition and a 2000 TV movie adaptation of Death of a Salesman. Law & Order helped springboard her career from there; March has since appeared in shows like Conviction, 30 Rock, Grey’s Anatomy, and Rescue Me. While on SVU, she also worked on the films Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005) and The Invention of Lying (2009). She even played Ivanka Trump in the Comedy Central TV movie A President Show Documentary: The Fall of Donald Trump (2019), and recently starred in the CW series Naomi.

March was married to celebrity chef Bobby Flay from 2005 to 2015. She later wed tech investor Dan Benton in 2017.

Dean Winters (Brian Cassidy)

Though his time on SVU was brief, Dean Winters’ Brian Cassidy helped show the emotional and psychological toll these cases can take on young detectives when he eventually transferred to narcotics, effectively exiting the show.

For a while, Winters mostly worked as a character actor in episodes of Third Watch and The Twilight Zone. His breakout role was as protagonist Ryan O’Reily in the acclaimed series Oz, which later led to scheduling conflicts with SVU, and thus his character’s departure from the latter. He’s since appeared in Sex and the City, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, 30 Rock, and Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Though he’s acted in movies like P.S. I Love You (2007), John Wick (2014), and, most recently, The Out-Laws (2023), he is perhaps best known to casual audiences as “Mayhem” in Allstate Insurance commercials.

Richard Belzer (John Munch)

The word “iconic” gets tossed around a lot, but it arguably applies to the late Richard Belzer’s John Munch. After all, the jaded detective was a staple on Homicide: Life on the Street before appearing on Law & Order: SVU. His character later resurfaced in episodes of Arrested Development, The X-Files, and The Wire, among others.

Before he spearheaded TV crossovers as Detective Munch, Belzer was a warm-up comedian on Saturday Night Live, a featured player on the National Lampoon Radio Hour, and appeared in films like Scarface (1983) and Species II (1998). After starring in Homicide from 1993 to 1999, he dazzled us for 15 seasons of SVU beginning in 1999.

Belzer died on Feb. 19, 2023, at age 78. Before his death, Belzer had been married three times. He is survived by his last wife, actress Harlee McBride.​