Caris Vujcec is a New York based actor, director, producer, and writer with more than twenty-five years of professional work across television, film, Broadway, and the American regional theater. Born in Syracuse, New York, she trained at Syracuse University and earned her MFA in Professional Actor Training at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
On television, she is best known for her long recurring run as Detective Louise Campesi across Law & Order: Criminal Intent and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, where she also appeared as prosecutor Bree Price. Her other screen credits include Dr. Kendra Collier on CBS's Bull opposite Michael Weatherly, plus Person of Interest, Elementary, Unforgettable, Without a Trace, Believe, Law & Order, and the feature film P.S. I Love You.
On Broadway she appeared in The Parisian Woman by Beau Willimon, directed by Pam MacKinnon, covering both the title role played by Uma Thurman and the supporting role played by Blair Brown. Off-Broadway, she covered Maggie Siff in the lead role of Marina in Alexis Scheer's Breaking the Story, directed by Jo Bonney. Her regional credits include Gertrude in Hamlet and Life X 3 at Pittsburgh Public Theater, Lady Macbeth in Macbeth at The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, Nadia in The Vertical Hour at Pioneer Theatre Company, and Two Rooms at Portland Stage.
She is also the creator, executive producer, writer, co-director, and star of the digital series The Pepper Project and its follow-up Pepper: Ricochet, which together have won and been nominated for more than forty awards on the international festival circuit, including a ranking as the number one U.S. digital series in the Web Series World Cup, Best Director at the New Jersey Web Festival, Best Actress at Austin Web Fest and die Seriale, and the inaugural Legacy Creator Award at DC Web Fest. She is currently creating, producing, and directing a new project, PUSH.
Caris has taught as an Adjunct Professor at The New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts and as an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Film and Speech at CUNY Hostos. In Scene Study at The Conservatory at NYPAA, she puts students on their feet with a partner and holds them to the standard of a professional rehearsal room. Her work centers on what actually makes a scene live: reading the text closely enough to find what each character wants, making specific and playable choices, listening well enough to be changed by the other actor, and repeating the work without going stale. Having spent her career both booking roles and casting them, she also teaches students to take direction quickly and to bring a point of view rather than waiting to be given one.
