Amanda Peet Biography

AMANDA PEET

Date of Birth: January 11, 1972

This New York native began taking acting classes when she was eight and attending an all-girls private school in London. After returning to the Big Apple, she was tutored by Broadway actress Uta Hagen. She graduated from Manhattan Friends High School, a Quaker institution, and then Columbia University. Although her degree was in history, she knew acting was her future.

At 22, Peet moved into her own apartment and began what she thought would be a protracted familiarity with serving restaurant diners while struggling to make it. That struggle was not to be, thanks to Skittles candy.

A commercial for the fruity candy, in which Peet spun cartwheels, supported her for more than two years with its $75,000 in residual returns. In that time, she landed bit parts on Seinfeld, Spin City, The Single Guy, Law and Order and Central Park West.

"There so wasn't a plan," she says. "Are you kidding? It was just, 'Say yes to work.' That was the plan."

In 1996 she scored her first major movie, One Fine Day, starring George Clooney and Michelle Pfeiffer. Since then, the actress has continued to build both her film and television credits: in 1997, she appeared in the AIDS drama Touch Me, and the following year she had sizable roles in the South Boston crime drama Southie and the millennial party fest 1999.

In 1999 she got her own television show, Jack and Jill, on the WB Network. That same year, she could be seen playing Sean Patrick Flanery's fiancé in Simply Irresistible and then acting as his bedmate in Body Shots, another in the long line of explorations into pre-millennial twenty-something dating angst.

After Isn't She Great? (2000) in which she played the editor who discovers Valley of the Dolls author Jacqueline Susann (Bette Midler), Peet completed The Whole Nine Yards (2000), a Mafia spoof in which Peet played a contract killer moonlighting as a dental assistant. She also starred in Whipped (1999), which she calls "not a pleasant look at dating in the '90s.

Since then, Amanda has been incredibly busy both in movies and on television. She starred as Alex Meyers on the NBC mini-series Bent in 2012, Laura Hellinger on the CBS crime drama The Good Wife from 2012 to 2013, Tina Morris on the HBO romantic comedy Togetherness from 2015 to 2016, and Jules James on the IFC comedy series Brockmire from 2017 to 2020.

Also in 2020, she played Betty Broderick on the Netflix series Dirty John: The Betty Broderick Story (2020).

Amanda married screenwriter David Benioff in 2006 and gave birth to their first child, daughter Frances Pen, the following year. In 2009, she gave birth to the couple's second daughter, Molly June. Their third child, son Henry, was born in 2014.

Filmography:

Gulliver's Travels (2010)
Quantum Quest: A Cassini Space Odyssey (2010) (voice)
Please Give (2010)
2012 (2009)
What Doesn't Kill You (2008)
Five Dollars a Day (2008)
The X-Files: I Want to Believe (2008)
Martian Child (2007)
Fast Track (2006)
Syriana (2005)
A Lot Like Love (2005)
Melinda and Melinda (2005)
The Whole Ten Yards (2004)
Something's Gotta Give (2003)
Identity (2003)
Changing Lanes (2002)
High Crimes (2002)
Igby Goes Down (2002)
Saving Silverman (2001)
The Whole Nine Yards (2000)
Isn't She Great (2000)
Saving Silverman (2000)
Body Shots (1999)
Simply Irresistible (1999)
Jump (1999)
Takedown (1999)
Two Ninas (1999)
Whipped (1999)
Playing by Heart (1998)
Southie (1998)
1999 (1998)
Origin of the Species (1998)
Touch Me (1997)
Grind (1997)
One Fine Day (1996)
She's the One (1996)
Virginity (1996)
Animal Room (1995)