Best known for her standout roles in Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Just Shoot Me!, and Pretty Woman, actress, Laura San Giacomo, has long used her platform for more than entertainment. Off-screen, she is a passionate and vocal advocate for disability inclusion, lending her voice to causes that foster equity, access, and community. A longtime supporter of Inclusion Matters by Shane’s Inspiration, a global nonprofit dedicated to creating play, dignity, and social equity for children with disabilities, San Giacomo was honored with the organization’s Humanitarian Award and most recently co-hosted its 2025 Heart to Heart Gala.
ABILITY Magazine’s Chet Cooper and Jennifer Woodall met with San Giacomo in a virtual interview to discuss her decades of advocacy, the personal experiences that fuel her work, and how inclusion continues to evolve in education, entertainment and everyday life.
Jennifer Woodall: Can you talk a little bit about how you became involved with the Inclusion Matters by Shane’s inspiration?
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Laura San Giacomo: I first heard about it as they were creating the first playground in Griffith Park, and of course I thought it was fantastic. I used to take my son to the park all the time, and I would help him climb the slide, but that was when he was littler and shorter, and I could really control and help him do his climbing, and he would also fit in the swings for very, very young children that have a T-strap, and they’re really contained and safer.
He was growing out of all of that, but still liked to go to the park, and it was becoming extremely difficult and dangerous for us to go. So, this was an amazing thing to have show up in the world. It was so impressive and such a point of common ground for so many families and so many kids. I know that it’s had a big influence on a lot of people.
Woodall: Did your son have a favorite thing to play on at the park when you went?
San Giacomo: Well, he loved the slide, and he loved the swing. Those were his two favorite things.
Woodall: Solid choices. In March of 2025 you hosted the Heart to Heart Gala for Inclusion Matters. What were the goals of the event?
San Giacomo: Continue to spread awareness, continued contributions to build more playgrounds. I think there’re 80 right now around the world. So, that’s pretty great. Obviously, honoring the founders and all of the children that have inspired these playgrounds and all of the companies and governments that have been involved in creating the playgrounds. And of course, honoring the honorees and their contribution that they have made to the community.
Woodall: What was it like, preparing for the event? Can you give me a day in the life of what that looks like?
San Giacomo: Well, Scott Williams, who’s one of the founders of Inclusion Matters, and I co-hosted the event. He, very luckily, is a writer, so he wrote all of the introductions and I reviewed those and prepared, as I would for any other public presentation or job. I did research on the people I introduced. I was familiar with some of the honorees just from being in the community for 30 years. Then I tried to figure out what to wear. This is basically the biggest problem for all of us. (laughs)
Woodall: Can you tell me about your experience at the event itself?
San Giacomo: Oh, my gosh. It was absolutely amazing. The stories that people told about their connections to each other was just amazing. The stories that people told of the success of the education program were absolutely amazing.
They have an education program where someone goes into the classroom and asks “What are your preconceived notions about disability?” along those lines. Then that class of typical kids goes to the playground and has a play date with a group of kids who happen to have disabilities. Then the educator goes back to the classroom afterwards–maybe not immediately afterwards, but sometime afterwards–then asks the student to talk about how their preconceived notions were dispelled by actually playing together. It’s absolutely an amazing program.
There were lots of stories about that. The change that that’s making in younger people–and probably older people as well–It was a really beautiful night. All of these people in the community are so interconnected. It’s amazing that in the world of a big city like Los Angeles, we’re all so interconnected and have crossed paths in so many different ways.
Even one person who’s on the board of Inclusion Matters told the story of how she found out about Inclusion Matters because she was standing behind me and my son on a checkout line at Toys R Us.I turned around and we started talking because I knew that her son had some special needs, and she knew that my son had some special needs. We just started gabbing, and I told her about Inclusion Matters by Shane’s Inspiration. She took her son there, and then she ended up on the board, and then she ended up on the Heart to Heart Gala committee. She’s been organizing the gala for 10 years. Then she shifted her law practice to be a special education lawyer.
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It was incredible. It just those kinds of interconnections in the community. I had so many people come up to me and say, “I met you seven years ago.” “I met you 15 years ago.” because we have all been supporting each other, going to other functions like functions for autism awareness, workshops, seminars, and fundraisers. It was just an amazing night and so warm. Then several people coming up to me and saying, “I raised my children. I had no idea that this was even in need. I had no consciousness that children couldn’t play, or we had no exposure to any children who had physical or other kinds of needs or disabilities.”
They were completely oblivious to this world, which can happen when kids are segregated or people are segregated in separate sites and have just come a little later in life, or even in their 30s or 40s, after they’ve begun to raise their children. Several people came up and said to me, “I had no idea. I never thought of it before.” It was just really moving. It had reverberations, just as Inclusion Matters by Shane’s Inspiration has had reverberations.
Woodall: I would love to hear your thoughts on disability inclusion in Hollywood, since that’s a landscape that you’re familiar with.
San Giacomo: Well, let’s see. There’s been a little bit of movement, I think. I found it very interesting, actually. During the writers’ strike, I went to some of the spots where writers were walking the line and found writers who happen to use wheelchairs. It was great to talk to them about their experience and ask their advice because my son wanted to walk the line and see where it was too dangerous where there wasn’t enough room for a wheelchair to actually be on the line or where it was dicey.
There was this really great show that I was involved in for a little bit with Joe Mantegna called As We See It. It was a couple of years ago, and it was based on another series, I think out of Israel. It was about a father and son, and the son happened to have autism. He wanted to live independently, and was living independently in an apartment with a couple of other young adults. It was quite amazing and quite well done. Not only in front of the camera, but behind the camera, there were lots of individuals who would maybe not typically be hired. And there was also an advocate on the set. I mean, it was just an amazing situation. Unfortunately, it didn’t get picked up, but it was a lovely, blooming community that was happening there, where lots of points of view were being expressed and played out for people to watch and see and to have some relationship to and understand maybe a little better who might not have that personal experience. I thought that was fantastic.
We’ve had some good examples in the last decade or so, so I think maybe some of these stories are emerging as producers and writers who happen to have family members who have these diverse needs start to tell their stories. Then students’ videos and investors have faith and interest. Certainly, Coda also opened up that world a little bit.
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Woodall: We talked to Joe Mantegna and then also Sue Ann Pien, who played one of the main characters in As We See It as well.
San Giacomo: She was great, right? Then she directed a short.
Woodall: Yes! We talked to Bella Zoe from that short, Once More, Like Rain Man.
Chet Cooper: I have to ask you, who’s in the picture behind you?
San Giacomo: That is a painting. Okay, I love this story. This is a painting that my husband did of a selfie that my son took of himself with his iPod. Isn’t that cool? I asked my husband to paint that as a present to me. Iit’s quite big, but it’s just like the corner of his face, I just thought it was such a striking photo. He really captured it. I’ve never done anything in front of this painting, and I was like, “Where am I going to go?” The house is so busy today. Everybody’s home and making noise and stuff so I thought, “I’m going to go in front of the painting.”
Cooper: Good choice.
San Giacomo: I’m so glad that you noticed it.
Cooper: It also drew the attention to like, “Okay, who’s looking over your shoulder?”
San Giacomo: Exactly. He’s looking over my shoulder. That was the metaphor I was going for.
Cooper: What does your son do now?
San Giacomo: Well, right now, he’s had some medical stuff going on, so he is just recovering and doing some of his regular stuff like his workouts and his art and music classes, and just trying to get his body back to good shape.
Woodall: What kind of art does your son like to make?
San Giacomo: Well, he’s done needlework, he’s done ceramics, he’s done painting–he’s done a lot of different things. They do a lot of different mediums. He goes to L.A. Goal, and they have quite an established music and art program and cooking program. Drama, singing, dance. It’s a really comprehensive program. It’s really cool.
Cooper: Do you know Habitat for Humanity?
San Giacomo: Yes.
Cooper: Our non-profit ABILITY Corps partnered with Millard Fuller to create the ABILITY House program, building homes for low-income families with disabilities using volunteers with disabilities. We also have A Brush of Kindness, where we make modifications to existing homes, such as painting or building ramps for family members who need them.
We were doing a Brush of Kindness at a house in the Greater LA area when I saw a young woman in a power chair with CP, making her speech difficult to understand. She had a support person with her, but I noticed the caretaker was doing all the work, so I decided to see what she could do. We got a power washer and taped the handle in the on position, allowing her to hold the wand with both hands and spray the wall, which made her laugh as she got soaking wet. Later, Blair Webb wrote a story about the experience, which became her first published article, highlighting the meaningful impact of volunteering.
San Giacomo: That’s really something. We all need to recognize in each other the difference that we make. It’s beautiful. It’s really beautiful.
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Cooper: I think volunteering is one of the best ways to actually not just help others, but help yourself. That’s why I love the ABILITY House project, people who are recipients have a chance to give back.
San Giacomo: Yeah, absolutely. That’s right, because when you help out someone else, you feel really self-confident.
Cooper: Can we talk about your history with CHIME Institute?
San Giacomo: I’m not involved in CHIME anymore, but how it started was I had coffee with one of the moms at the preschool. The preschool lab was created by a Department of Education grant that was given to CSUN (California State University, North Ridge) to study full inclusion at the preschool level. So, this other mom and her son was also at the preschool, and she said, “We need to start a school.” because what we were finding is that most of the kids who are in full inclusion are not really being treated as full classmates–full participating classmates.
Also, I think there were some issues about being fully included. So, we and some parents and some professors took it to the dean of education. The charter school movement was just blossoming at that time, and the dean was supportive. Then the professors went out into the charter school community, various conferences and such, and people were very negative and thought, “It’s not going to fly, Orville.” because it’s an extreme extremely expensive model.
But they persisted and wrote the charter with the help of some of their friends who were professors in other Cal State universities that had started charter schools. And through, I believe, a year and a half to two-year process, finally the charter was approved. We found a space, a couple of classrooms at a local church. We scrubbed the space, and we found tables from the university storage area. Parents sawed off the legs so they would be the right height for the little wee ones, and that’s how it started.
It was a really exciting and scary time, but it was really exciting. I’ll tell you another story that maybe some of the people involved now don’t know because they weren’t there. Within the first couple of weeks of school, there was a moment of silence in honor of the persons who were victims of 9/11. It was all around the country at that time. It was a moment of silence, and it happened to be during our pledge of allegiance. In that moment, all the students signed, American Signed Language, the pledge of allegiance. Actually, my son’s electronic voice on his AAC was the only voice on the playground as they were all lined up in those first couple of weeks of school. All the kids. Because at that time, there was also a DHH component, a deaf and hard hearing component to the school, and it was extremely moving.
The education correspondent for KPCC (radio station), Adolfo Guzman-Lopez, did a piece on CHIME at the first 100 days of school. A crew came out to the school to interview the kids and the teachers. It was very interesting because at the first 100 days, no classmate ever described their friend or classmate, by their disability. They only described them by their favorite food, their favorite superhero, what they had on their backpack, or what they liked to do. Disability was not seen. I know we see that all the time in inclusive education. Kids melt that away, and they’re just friends.
