Law & Order SVU Cast: Meet the Longest-Running Members and New Characters

Law & Order: SVU is one of the longest-running primetime television shows in history, at 25 seasons and counting.

Since the show’s debut in 1999, numerous celebrities have guest-starred on the procedural drama, which follows the New York Police Department’s Special Victims Unit as they work to solve sex crimes.

Actors including Robin Williams, Bradley Cooper, Martin Short, Alec Baldwin, Hilary Duff — and dozens of others — have all appeared in episodes of SVU. But it’s the show’s core cast of detectives, journalists and crime fighters that have made the show a success over the past two-plus decades.

For the first 12 years, Law & Order: SVU was led by an iconic duo: Detectives Olivia Benson (played by Mariska Hargitay) and Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni).

Meloni’s exit from the show in 2011 left a hole in the Special Victims Unit and fans’ hearts — one that’s been filled by other longstanding members of the cast, like Ice-T, and fresh faces over the years, including Danny Pino, Kelli Giddish and Peter Scanavino.

Law & Order: SVU returned with new episodes in January 2024, with Hargitay still at the helm of the cast — and the occasional guest appearance from Meloni, who now stars in his own Law & Order spinoff, Law & Order: Organized Crime.

“Even if I had been wildly, recklessly optimistic about the future, I couldn’t have ever dreamed that we’d be here in this moment in television history,” Hargitay told PEOPLE about the show.

In honor of its landmark 25th season, here’s a look at the Law & Order SVU cast — past and present.

Mariska Hargitay as Olivia Benson

Mariska Hargitay’s name is practically synonymous with Olivia Benson, the Law & Order: SVU character she’s played since 1999 — the longest-running primetime drama character in television history.

Hargitay studied acting at UCLA before landing her first movie role in 1985’s Ghoulies. Her first television job came a year later, on the series Downtown. She went on to appear on shows including ER, Baywatch and Seinfeld in the 1990s — but her breakout cameo role in 1999 when she earned the role of Detective Olivia Benson on NBC’s latest Law & Order spinoff.

“I fell so in love with her and so in love with the idea of ​​this show, as progressive as it was at the time, and telling these kinds of stories,” she told The New York Times.

Hargitay’s portrayal of Benson, who has been captain of Manhattan’s Special Victims Unit on the procedural crime drama since the 21st season, has solved hundreds of fictional sex crimes over the past two decades — and become a beacon of hope for sexual assault victims in the process.

Christopher Meloni as Elliot Stabler

Christopher Meloni stood by Hargitay’s side for 12 seasons as NYPD Detective Elliot Stabler, Benson’s partner in solving sex crimes on SVU. Prior to being cast on SVU in 1999, though, Meloni had more experience portraying criminals in his acting career.

Meloni’s big break came in 1996 when he was cast in the thriller film Bound. He followed that up with a brief run on NYPD Blue as criminal Jimmy Liery before playing serial killer Chris Keller on the HBO series Oz from 1998 to 2003. shortly after landing the role on Oz, Meloni was cast as Stabler on SVU — a role he continued to play for 12 years abruptly before leaving the show in 2011 over contract disagreements.

Meloni’s exit from SVU crushed fans and Hargitay, who was “devastated” over his departure from the show. “I was just so sad, because we started this thing and built it together,” she told PEOPLE.