Piper Perabo Biography

PIPER PERABO

Date of Birth: October 31, 1976

Piper Perabo was born in Tom Rivers, New Jersey and is of Norwegian and Portuguese descent. A super achiever in high school, Piper was president of the National Honor Society and edited the school literary magazine. She was also a cheerleader and appeared in four stage musicals.

Piper then attended Ohio University, graduating summa cum laude in 1998 with a BFA in drama. She moved to New York City, where she soon landed her first role in a short film called Single Spaced (1998), playing a giant squid.

Her feature film debut was in the limited release Whiteboys (1999), playing a wannabe rapper's girlfriend. The big budget feature The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle (2000) followed, giving Piper the chance to work with Robert De Niro and Renee Russo.

However, her big break was a starring role in Coyote Ugly (2000), playing Violet, a New Jersey girl who moves to New York and works as a bartender while waiting for her big break. Piper, who had worked as a cocktail waitress upon arrival in NYC, identified with the role. The film was a critical success and Piper not only received a nomination as Favorite Female Newcomer from the Blockbuster Entertainment Awards, but won an MTV Movie Award for Best Music Moment for her vocal rendition of "One Way or Another."

In Lost and Delirious (2001), she played a boarding school student who falls in love with another girl. Though given only a limited release, the film won several film festival awards. Piper took on the role of a French exchange student in her next film, Slap Her... She's French (2002), but although it was scheduled for a wide release in North America, it was instead inexplicably shelved and shown theatrically only in Great Britain and Germany.

Her career stalled momentarily as she worked in small-budget independent films and shorts, but she returned to the big screen playing Steve Martin and Bonnie Hunt's eldest daughter in the 20th Century Fox film, Cheaper By The Dozen (2003), followed by the sequel in 2005. She continued to land roles, albeit mostly in smaller films, until the 2012 blockbuster Looper co-starring Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, which opened the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival.

From 2010 to 2015, Perabo enjoyed a recurring role on the television series Covert Affairs. Since then she's starred on the ABC drama series Notorious in 2016, followed by the 2019 Netflix sitcom Turn Up Charlie, starring alongside Idris Elba. The same year, she played a co-starring role alongside Gerard Butler in the action film Angel Has Fallen (2019).

Perabo, a vegetarian, lives in New York City and has two younger brothers, Adam and Noah. In 2014 she married New Zealand director Stephen Kay.

Filmography:

Looper (2012)
Ashes (2010)
Carriers (2009)
Ashes (2008)
Sordid Things (2008)
The Lazarus Project (2008)
Beverly Hills Chihuahua (2008)
Ashes (2007)
Because I Said So (2007)
First Snow (2006)
The Prestige (2006)
Cheaper By the Dozen 2 (2005)
First Snow (2005)
10th & Wolf (2006)
Click (2005)
Edison (2005)
The Cave (2005)
Perception (2005)
A Piece of My Heart (2004)
Cheaper by the Dozen (2003)
The I Inside (2003)
Slap Her... She's French (2002)
Lost and Delirious (2001)
Followers (2000)
Coyote Ugly (2000)
The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle (2000)
Whiteboys (1999)