A Field Guide To Piper Perabo

Watching Piper Perabo toplessly straddle a dude yesterday got us thinking about how much we like that lady--there must be some unwritten rule that people named Piper are always cool (take Piper Laurie from "Twin Peaks" for example). As you probably know, when we like someone, we spend all Tuesday afternoon and evening learning what we can about them. It makes us feel closer to them, and hopefully it does the same for you, too.

Piper Lisa Perabo was born on October 31, 1976 in Dallas, Texas to a physical therapist and a professor of poetry; her family raised her in Toms River, New Jersey. They actually named their daughter after Piper Laurie, so they clearly know what's good (and before that, they were about to name her India Star). After graduating high school, she matriculated at Ohio University and graduated summa cum laude in 1998 with a BFA in acting.

Piper then moved to New York and took to the stage in a number of successful productions, but she definitely struggled through those times, waiting tables at night and working on her craft during the day. As she mentioned to CNN, it wasn't the easiest transition: "I got lost a lot, and I was a really bad waitress ... I got lost on the subway. 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'd be like, 'What is wrong? This train is supposed to stop here!'" Within a year, Piper had her first big break in "Whiteboyz," playing the girlfriend of a goofy white kid who wants to be a hardcore gangster rapper (1999, how we miss you) and later appeared as an FBI agent in "The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle," but she didn't become a household name until "Coyote Ugly."

Oh, yes, that movie. The producers did a countrywide search for an actor to play a Jersey girl making it on her own in New York--and rumor has it that both Jewel and Britney Spears were up for the role--but nobody fit the part quite like Piper, whose journey looks very much like that of her character, Violet. Who can forget the moment when Violet finally overcomes her stage fright, gets up on the bar, and sings "One Way or Another" in order to calm the teeming throngs of navy men storming the place? We sure can't, and it even earned Piper an MTV Movie Award for Best Music Moment.

A year later, Piper satisfied our deepest desires to see the "Coyote Ugly" girl get frisky in "Lost and Delirious," a movie about three young ladies at an all-girls boarding school. Long story short, Mischa Barton arrives at the school and finds that her two roommates, Piper Perabo and Jessica Pare, have a budding romance and often spend time rolling around in each other's beds. If you'd like to view said rolling around yourself, we have a clip right here! How does Piper feel about her first time naked on film? Here's the answer:

I think that the nudity is pretty important to the story. A lot of times it's sort of a pre-requisite, especially in American films, to have to go to sort of sex scenes, but here it conveys the intimacy and depth and passion and seriousness of how they felt about each other. I felt it was just the right thing, sort of "a picture is worth a thousand words." Getting that clear to the audience and then being able to move on without having to explain anything more.

Piper has stayed busy since then, appearing in a handful of films every year, some good (like "The Prestige") and some questionable (like "Cheaper by the Dozen," "Cheaper by the Dozen 2," "Beverly Hills Chihuahua"), and recently she made the move to television where she has the lead role on USA Network's "Covert Affairs." Piper used to be wary of television--and prior to "Covert Affairs," she only had guest spots on "House" and "Law & Order"--but her mind was changed by Holly Hunter, Kyra Sedgwick, and Glenn Close. She explained her feelings to Zap2it earlier this year: "When those three women all started leading television shows, it actually changed my perspective on what's possible for a lead actress on TV... To watch them head shows that were serious dramas, and where they were characters who were in charge, opened my eyes to the possibility of television and really got me excited about it." And the acting community is excited about Piper, too; she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Television Drama Series!

What else is Piper Perabo about? Damn: a bunch of stuff. In old interviews, she said that she liked to travel cross-country with friends, "just jump in a truck with your backpack and just drive and go somewhere," but in the last bunch of years, she's been helping to open up restaurants in New York City. In 2005, she opened Employees Only, a prohibition-era themed bar in the West Village, and this year she's opened Jack's Wife Freda, a cute little mom-and-pop restaurant with an old Jewish cuisine vibe.

Whether she's dancing on bars or building them (or, you know, showing her boobs), Piper Perabo is a smart and sexy powerhouse who has a whole lot to be proud of.

Check out:
· Piper Perabo on Twitter (twitter.com)