Piper Perabo

Piper Lisa Perabo is an American actress born on October 31, 1976, in Dallas, Texas. She grew up in Toms River, New Jersey, as the eldest of three children born to Mary Charlotte, a physical therapist, and George William Perabo, a poetry lecturer at Ocean County College. She was named after actress Piper Laurie and is of English, German, Irish, and Norwegian descent. Perabo graduated from Toms River High School North in 1994 and earned a bachelor's degree in theater from the Honors Tutorial College at Ohio University in 1998. During her college years, she attended the Trinity/La MaMa Performing Arts Program and studied Latin, physics, and poetry.

Perabo was discovered while visiting New York City prior to completing college, when casting director Denise Fitzgerald spotted her at an audition and helped her secure an agent. After graduating, Perabo moved to New York City to pursue acting, working as a waitress and studying at the La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club. She secured her first feature film role in the comedy Whiteboyz shortly after moving. Her breakthrough came in 2000 when she starred as Violet "Jersey" Sanford in the box office success Coyote Ugly, winning an MTV Movie Award for Best Music Moment.

Following her breakthrough, Perabo focused on independent films. In 2001, she starred in the Canadian drama Lost and Delirious, earning critical acclaim for her performance as a boarding school student. She subsequently appeared as a French exchange student in the comedy Slap Her... She's French, later released in North America as She Gets What She Wants. In 2003, Perabo played Nora Baker in the comedy Cheaper by the Dozen, a role she reprised in the 2005 sequel Cheaper by the Dozen 2. Her film work during this era also included featuring in projects such as The I Inside, Perfect Opposites, George and the Dragon, The Cave, Imagine Me & You, Edison, and The Prestige.

In 2008, Perabo co-starred in the family comedy Beverly Hills Chihuahua and made her off-Broadway debut in Neil LaBute's play Reasons to Be Pretty. She subsequently transitioned into television, landing the lead role of CIA agent Annie Walker in the USA Network spy drama series Covert Affairs, which ran from 2010 to 2014. Her performance in the series earned her a nomination for a 2010 Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Drama.

Perabo continued to take on diverse film and television projects throughout the 2010s and 2020s. On screen, she appeared in films such as Looper, Into the Grizzly Maze, Black Butterfly, Angel Has Fallen, and Spontaneous. On television, she held roles in the sitcom Go On, the drama series Notorious, the Netflix comedy Turn Up Charlie, and the supernatural horror series Penny Dreadful: City of Angels. She also joined the cast of the drama series Yellowstone as animal rights activist Summer Higgins, and appeared in Billions and Butterfly. In 2025, she co-starred in the independent Quebec film Peak Everything, performing in both English and French.

Outside of acting, Perabo married New Zealand director and writer Stephen Kay in 2014 and is a stepmother to his daughter. She speaks fluent French, advocates for LGBT rights and women's political leadership, and serves on advisory boards for VoteRunLead and The Hometown Project. She has also engaged in political activism, including civil disobedience protests regarding Supreme Court confirmation hearings and climate change. Additionally, Perabo is a co-owner of the New York establishments Employees Only and Jack's Wife Freda.