Angela Michelle Harmon is an American fashion model and television/film actress. She became a well-known model in the 1990s, and developed a career as a television star after roles on Baywatch Nights and Law & Order. Her best-known film role was in 2003's Agent Cody Banks. Harmon has been described as "one of the true American beauties, a woman of flawless skin, impossibly thick black hair, steep but not overtly sexy curves, high cheekbones, and hypnotic, walnut-colored eyes."
Harmon was born in Highland Park, Texas to Larry Paul Harmon (who worked in a Dallas hospital information network) and Daphne Demar Caravageli, both of whom were well-known models in the 1970s. Her mother is of Greek descent and her father is of Cherokee Native American ancestry. Her parents divorced in 1982 and her father later re-married.
Harmon worked as a child model and in 1988, won a Seventeen magazine modeling contest. She graduated from Highland Park High School in 1990 and won a Spectrum Model Search contest shortly after her graduation, subsequently pursuing a successful modeling career and becoming well known in the early 1990s. She worked as a runway model for designers Calvin Klein, Giorgio Armani and Donna Karan and appeared on the covers of ELLE, Comsopolitan and Esquire.
Harmon began acting in 1995, starring in several television series, including Baywatch Nights, Baywatch and C-16: FBI; she also appeared in the 1998 film, Lawn Dogs, which received only a limited theatrical release. In the early 2000s, Harmon became better known after playing district attorney Abbie Carmichael on the series Law & Order, a role she played from 1998 to 2001. During this time, she also voiced Commissioner Barbara Gordon on the animated series, Batman Beyond and appeared on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
Harmon left Law & Order to concentrate on her film career, saying that she preferred being a film star to being a television actress. After appearing in the 2001 direct-to-video film, Good Advice, she had a major role in Agent Cody Banks, playing the CIA handler of a teenage agent (Frankie Muniz). The film opened in March 2003 and became a minor hit, grossing $47 million.Although Harmon was originally scheduled to appear in the sequel, the producers chose to take a more comedic approach, and replaced Harmon with comic actor Anthony Anderson as Banks' handler.
