Laura San Giacomo is 63, she’s married, she lives in the San Fernando Valley — and she’s working. She turns up in two Apple TV series that arrived this year: as Tessa in Margo’s Got Money Troubles in April, and as Peg Rosenthal in the second season of Sugar in June.
So the question has the wrong premise built into it. She never went away at all. She was doing something else — and honestly, it’s the better story.
Updated September 2026
What is Laura San Giacomo doing today?
Two new series in a single year, and a red carpet to go with them.
She walked the Sugar season two premiere at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles on 17 June 2026 — hair silver-blonde now, rather than the dark bob half the world still pictures her in. That’s 36 years on from Pretty Woman, if you want to feel something about the passing of time.
Before that she spent years as Dr. Grace Confalone on NCIS, the therapist who managed to get further with Gibbs than almost anyone did.
What happened to Laura San Giacomo?
Nothing dramatic — which is exactly why the rumour has hung around so long.
In 1996 she had a son, Mason, who was born with cerebral palsy. She kept working. What she stopped doing was chasing the kind of career that requires you to be on another continent for six months at a stretch.
In a 2001 interview she described her son plainly, without softening a word of it. He “does not walk independently, sit independently or speak,” she said. “He uses a talking computer.” He was five years old.
And then, almost in passing, she said what she was doing about it.
“We decided to start an elementary school. We’ve been working on it the last year. We open in two and a half weeks.”
Did Laura San Giacomo really help start a school?
She did. She was one of the founding parents behind the CHIME Institute’s elementary charter school in Woodland Hills, California, which opened its doors in 2001 — a school built on the idea that children with disabilities and children without them belong in the same classroom, not in separate buildings across town.
A middle school followed in 2003, and the two merged into a K-8 in 2010. The CHIME Institute itself goes back further, founded in 1990 at CSUN by Dr. Claire Cavallaro and Michele Haney. What San Giacomo and a group of other parents and professors did was turn that into an actual school — one her son could walk into.
That’s the answer to “what happened to Laura San Giacomo” that no filmography will ever give you. She spent the years nobody was watching getting a school built.
Who is Laura San Giacomo’s son, Mason?
Mason is around 30 now, and he has a life of his own.
He attends L.A. Goal, where he does art, music and cooking — needlework, ceramics, painting. He works out. He communicates using an AAC device. The child whose diagnosis supposedly ended his mother’s career grew up to be an artist.
His father is Cameron Dye, San Giacomo’s first husband.
Who is Laura San Giacomo’s husband?
Actor Matt Adler. They married in 2000 and are still married. She was married to Cameron Dye from 1990 to 1998.
How old is Laura San Giacomo?
She’s 63 — born on 14 November 1962 in West Orange, New Jersey, which makes her 64 this November. A few sources list 1961, but 1962 is the year most of them carry.
What is Laura San Giacomo best known for?
sex, lies, and videotape in 1989, which won the Palme d’Or and handed her an Independent Spirit Award and a Golden Globe nomination in her very first film. Then, a year later, Kit De Luca in Pretty Woman — Julia Roberts’ roommate, and the one who says the thing about the fairy tale.
After that came Quigley Down Under, Nadine Cross in The Stand, the voice of Elisa Maza in Gargoyles, and 149 episodes of Just Shoot Me! as Maya Gallo. More recently: Veronica Mars, Animal Kingdom, Saving Grace and NCIS.
She trained at Carnegie Mellon’s School of Drama and graduated in 1984, which is to say she was very good at this before anyone had heard of her.
Is Laura San Giacomo still an advocate?
She never stopped being one. She co-hosted the 2025 Heart to Heart Gala for Inclusion Matters by Shane’s Inspiration — the organisation behind some 80 inclusive playgrounds around the world, and one that had already given her a humanitarian award. She’s also served as board secretary of Momentum Wheels for Humanity.
What is Laura San Giacomo’s net worth?
Estimates land around $4 million, though that comes from celebrity-finance sites rather than anything she’s ever disclosed. She bought her San Fernando Valley home back in 2000, for $885,000.
Who does Laura San Giacomo play in Sugar?
Peg Rosenthal, in the second season — eight episodes that ran from June 2026. It was her second new series in three months.
What is Margo’s Got Money Troubles?
An Apple TV series that premiered in April 2026, created by David E. Kelley, with Elle Fanning in the title role alongside Michelle Pfeiffer, Nicole Kidman and Nick Offerman. San Giacomo plays Tessa, Margo’s boss at the restaurant.
Two prestige casts in one spring, for an actress the internet had quietly written off.
What is CHIME?
The CHIME Institute was founded in 1990 at California State University, Northridge, by Dr. Claire Cavallaro and Michele Haney — an early-childhood programme built around the idea of inclusion.
The charter elementary school, the one San Giacomo and a group of other parents pushed into existence, opened in 2001. A middle school followed in 2003, and in 2010 the two merged into a K-8: the CHIME Institute’s Schwarzenegger Community School, in Woodland Hills.
Who was Laura San Giacomo’s first husband?
The actor Cameron Dye. They married in 1990 and divorced in 1998. Mason is their son.
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