Biography

Piper was born on October 31, 1976, and is the oldest of three siblings. She grew up in Toms River, New Jersey. Her parents are Mary Charlotte, a physical therapist, and George William, a poetry professor at Ocean County College. They originally intended to name their daughter "India Star", but settled on the name Piper instead - after the actress Piper Laurie. Piper knew early on that she wanted to be an actress. As a child, she put together plays on her grandmother's porch. It had a curtain on one side, which she fashioned into her own theater. She began to perform for her family, with her childhood interest in acting only increasing with time. After graduating from the Toms River High School in 1994, she attended Ohio University, from which she graduated in 1998 "summa cum laude" ("with distinguished honor" - used to express the highest level of academic distinction). To further her career as an actress, Piper moved to New York City, where she performed at the LaMama Theatre, appearing in "Arms and the Man", "Trinity", "Antigone", "Fool for Love", "Kindertransport", and "Our Town". After that Piper landed the role in the short movie Single Spaced, and shortly after that, she appeared in another short movie - Knuckleface Jones - written an directed by Todd Rohal. The 5 ft. 4 in actress got her first big role in 1999 in Whiteboyz. She finally had her breakthrough performance with Coyote Ugly, where she plays the role of Violet Sanford, who moves - almost autobiographical - from New Jersey to New York and works as a waitress, while trying to cultivate a career. After this film, critics billed her as "the new Julia Roberts", prompting Piper to respond: "Hopefully that means they like my movies, and not that I just got a big mouth - Cause literally I've got one!" Dirty hair almost cost her her role in The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle. During the audition the director asked her, "Do you have a comb or a brush or something? Your hair is just a little dirty." whereupon the camera man gave Piper his comb. Piper later commented, "My hair was not that dirty. It was just kind of like a grunge look." Piper attaches great importance to playing as many different characters as possible. For example, in the fantasy movie George and the Dragon, she's a bubbly princess, whereas she plays an exchange student in the comedy She gets what she wants. There she impressed people with her French accent. But her mastery of accents extend beyond Français: In Imagine Me & You, she plays a british women and had to switch from an American-English accent to British. According to Piper, swearing was the hardest part: In an interview she admitted, "I can´t swear in British!" She noted that for some reason c**p was the hardest word for her. Although she uses it just once in the movie, Piper said it felt like she had to say it "like a billion times." At least in German she wouldn't have had such problems. There, they cheer for a footballer instead of swear at him. Lost and Delirious is the movie Piper claims to be most proud of. She plays a fencing student who has an affair with her roommate. Piper even took fencing lessons for that role. But after three gay roles, the 31-year old isn't anxious about being pigeonholed into certain genres. In an interview she laughingly said, "Listen, if I get typecast playing lesbian characters, all I can say is bring on the good roles! As long as I don't get stuck playing those Coyote Ugly kinds of parts." Her dream role is playing "Josephine Bonaparte". By contrast, she would rather forget her role as Charlie in The Cave. Piper, commenting on shooting the program: "We spent three months in Romania scuba diving and rock climbing, the boys were nice, but I really needed a girl to talk to." The girl she meant was Lena Headey - the beginning of a great friendship, which helped both actresses during their shooting for Imagine Me & You. Piper is described as a smart and humorous person. She still lives in New York and is protective of her private life. If she goes out with friends, she prefers a beer to one of "those pink-ladies-drinks". She spends some of her free time restoring antique books. In an interview, she admitted, "When I first moved to New York, I didn't have any money, so I always bought used books, and I just got a thing for them. Then I started studying book restoration." She loves the smell and the dust. So, if Piper wasn't an actress, we would probably find her as a literary professor. In all likelihood, she would have approached that job with passion - but fortunately we will never have the chance to find out.