A lot of times with comedic actors, they sort of perform for you all the time. And that can get a little exhausting, especially when you're doing a film, because you're together all the time and you kind of want somebody who can come down and have a coffee with in the morning when you get to work.
And so when I graduated I moved to New York, and I was waitressing here and auditioning - and I got my first job pretty soon after.
But at school, I wasn't athletic, and if you're not athlete in high school, it's kind of hard to find your place, so play practice seemed perfect, especially if you were as uncoordinated as I was.
But Paulie gives all of herself away, and so to create a love like that and a person who would give themselves away was what I thought was going to be difficult. I was little scared of such a challenge.
First of all, I'm not a good waitress, so I don't know if I'd have the guts to come in every night. It's a hard job, but fun.
I can only pay my electric bill for my last two years on my acting.
I can understand in some sense, having played the character, how unimaginably frustrating it is for people to tell you that you can't love who you love, because you ain't going to change it, and so they have to get out of your way.
I didn't realize there was a difference between local and express, so I'd always get on the express and my stop would fly by.
I don't know how you get dressed if you live in Wales, because it's pouring rain and then it's hot sunshine, and then it might hail. It's just so confusing.
I got lost a lot, and I was a really bad waitress... I got lost on the subway.
I had just done what she does in the story just about a year earlier - I moved from New Jersey and came to New York and was working at a bar, and you know, trying to make it.
I had seen Shawn Levy's movie just before, Just Married. And I think when I met him too, he's very smart and together and he's got it together.
I live not too far from it in New York City.
I mean, its hard to be an actor in the city - trying to make it as an actor - because you waitress all night, you get home really late and you're super tired and your feet hurt.
I really like to just jump in a truck with your backpack and just drive and go somewhere.
I started fencing about a month beforehand, and I sort of built Paulie's physicality based on her fencing - where your weight placement is and how you hold your body.
I think that you love who you love, and there are people who you love that people aren't going to understand why, and that sort of doesn't really matter.
I think that's why I like New York City because you can just put on your backpack and just explore; you never know where you are going to end up.
I was bookish and dorky in high school, so the best part of this movie was getting to be on the other side.
I was never the girl who walked down the centre of the hallway snapping people out of her way.
I went to college in Ohio, at Ohio University, and I graduated two years ago.
I'm NOT lost, they just moved my street.
I'm really bad at downshifting. The guys with the flags at each turn are all either giving me looks or turning and running.
I've never been one for sitting on beaches.
In Texas it's always hot, dry, sunny, not a cloud in the sky.
In Wales, it's eight different weathers in a day.
It takes a lot of guts to get up on top of a bar and dance.
It was so much fun to play, that I've now had a taste for it and want to play more villains now.
It's like a blind turn on a highway: You can't see what's coming, so you don't really know how to prepare.
Let me tell you who I am: I'm a girl from New Jersey who moved to New York and worked in a bar while trying to make a living at what I really wanted to do, which was act.
Most people, at least in my experience, when they love someone sort of hold something back, somewhere hidden in themselves.
Nobody got Punk'd and he was still in his season for that show when we were filming. So the kids were very aware that it was filming and that was his show and they were very much on the lookout for that.
She tries to get a waitressing job for a while - I mean, she's looking for a while before she finds Coyote Ugly - and it's hard to get a waitressing job in the city.
So I started to learn guitar right away.
So it was just funny to read a script that was just similar to what had been going on in my life.
So to be the girl, who's the sorta shy, quiet one but then turns into the manipulative, popular girl, was kind of wonderful.
That's what I think we're all looking for - an honest love wherever you can find it.
There are a lot of people who wait tables. And especially because you can do it at night and you can do your work in the day, she and I had a very similar experience.
There's no changing your mind about whom you love. That's part of the tough thing about being in love - it's sort of undeniable.
Well, I don't think I have ever loved like she has. It's pretty dangerous actually to give all of yourself away.
Well, love is confusing at all ages, but especially when you're 17.
Well, usually when I finish one character, I'm looking for a role that's really different.
What I'd really like to do is do a film or two a year and then do theater in New York the rest of the year.
Willem Dafoe seems to move between kind of avante-garde theatre and film, and I think eventually that's what I'd like to do.
You can only really open yourself up so far to someone that you don't truly love - you keep something back when you know somewhere in your gut that this relationship is going to be forever.
She has an extensive career acting in movies: - Carriers (2007)as Bobby (as of Mar 2007, this movie is in post-production) - Ashes (2007) as Bettina (as of Mar 2007, this movie is complete) - Because I Said So (2007) as Mae - First Snow as Deirdre - The Prestige (2006) as Julia Angier - Karas: The Prophecy (2006) as Yurine (voice) - 10th & Wolf (2006) as Brandy - Cheaper by the Dozen 2 (2005) as Nora Baker-McNulty - Good Morning Baby (2005) as Gabriella - Edison (2005) as Willow Summerfield - Imagine Me & You (2005) as Rachel - The Cave (2005) as Charlie - Perception (2005) as Jen - George and the Dragon (2004) as Princess Luma - Perfect Opposites (2004) as Julia Bishop - Cheaper by the Dozen (2003) as Nora Baker - The I Inside (2003) as Anna - Followers (2000) as Girl at Party - Coyote Ugly (2000) as Violet Sanford - The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle (2000) as FBI Agent Karen Sympathy - Whiteboyz (1999) as Sara - Knuckleface Jones (1999) as That Girl - Single Spaced (1998) as Giant Squid
Piper favorite movies are the dramatic movies: Days of Heaven and Room with a View.
She has a degree in Theater, achieved summa cum laude from Ohio University in 1998.
Her first acting part was in 1998 in the short film, Single Spaced as Giant Squid.
Her father's name is George William Perabo, is Portuguese and her mother, Mary Charlotte Ulland, is Norwegian American.
Piper was pleasantly surprised when her movie co-star Justin Timberlake was nothing like she expected. She met Timberlake when they shot the upcoming film Edison together, and she was concerned the hitmaker would either be immature or a male diva. She says, "I was really nervous he was gonna be c**p, or have an entourage, but he was really well prepared, and he takes his work really seriously."
Piper was voted #98 on AskMen.com's Top 99 Women of 2006.
Piper starred in the film Lost and Delirious as 'Paulie', a closeted lesbian.
The scar on her cheek is from when she scratched herself when she was younger.
Piper's favorite types of music is classical and jazz.
Piper was considered for the lead role in the movie Uptown Girls.
Piper is a vegetarian.
Piper graduated from Toms River High School North in 1994.
Piper was born on Halloween in 1977.
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