She is best known for her portrayal of NYPD Detective Amanda Rollins in the NBC crime-drama television series Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (2011–2023; 2024).

[3] In Georgia, she attended Forsyth Central High School and was very involved with a local drama teacher named Yatesy Harvey, who was a friend of her mother and ran a community theater.

For years in her youth Giddish performed in Harvey's plays and participated in her sleepover drama camps.

Of Harvey, Giddish has been quoted as saying, "She just inspired a fierce curiosity and very high standards of what acting was and how much dedication it took and rehearsal and we would do plays every night.

While at Forsyth Central, she was a member of their championship softball team and in 1998 she was the State Literary Champion for Girls Dramatic Interpretation.

[citation needed] In July 2007, it was confirmed by Soap Opera Weekly magazine that Giddish and All My Children parted ways in a mutual decision and that she would make her final appearance as Di on September 19, 2007.

Giddish, Nicholas Bishop, and Ravi Patel were cast in Fox's reincarnation drama pilot Past Life.

[6] It was announced on May 18, 2009, that Fox had ordered Past Life to series, airing midseason 2010 at 9:00 PM EST on Tuesdays.

[8] Giddish received rave reviews for her ability to play the lead character in the series, but it was pulled in early February 2011.

It was announced on June 27, 2011, that Giddish would join the cast of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit for its thirteenth season along with Cold Case's Danny Pino coinciding with Christopher Meloni's departure from the series.

Giddish expressed confidence that viewers would warm up to Rollins and another new character, Nick Amaro (Pino), with time.

[14] Giddish's final episode as a regular cast member was season 24, episode 9 ("And a Trauma in a Pear Tree") in which Rollins married ADA Dominick Carisi Jr. (Peter Scanavino) and resigned from the Special Victims Unit to accept an offer to teach at Fordham University.