Piper Perabo

Who remembers Piper Perabo from Coyote Ugly? Here's an interview in the latest 213 magazine...

(213): Do you believe in love at first sight?

PIPER PERABO: Yeah, I believe in love at first sight. I do. I think every time I've fallen in love, even if I didn't admit it to myself right in that first moment, when I looked back - I knew it from the start that I loved that person.

(213): Imagine Me & You throws a curve ball into the whole "happily ever after" notion. Do you believe in happily ever afters?

PP: I think it is not that simple. I think ever after is a long time and happy is a kind of narrow description of a life. I wouldn't want to just be happy. I want to be interested and challenged. I believe in great relationships that bring a lot to your life for a long time. I think happily ever after is a little narrow.

(213): Any similarities between Piper Perabo and your Imagine Me & You character: Rachel?

PP: We actually don't have very much in common, except that both of us might marry Matthew Goode if given the chance. Other than that, she and I are very dissimilar.

(213): You're a Jersey girl. How long did it take for you to get the English accent together?

PP: I had done it once before in a small film - an English accent. I went to England about a month and a half early and started working on the voice work for the film. I was still working on it up through and during the picture. I did a lot of work actually - not interesting in any way, but time consuming.

(213): Having been in character for so long, do you find yourself breaking the old English out every now and then?

PP: I do actually. It is so lame drama student, but I really like accents and I find them kind of infectious, even if I can't do them well, I can't help but try them out like somebody else's clothes.

(213): Your starring debut was in Jerry Bruckheimer's Coyote Ugly, which is obligated to have the superficial things associated with a Disney blockbuster. Imagine Me & You is bare by comparison. Is there a line of frankness that you are careful not to cross?

PP: No, if anything I want to be on that line of frankness. I very much enjoy playing real characters who are worried about other people's feelings and there isn't an obvious villain, that life is confusing and heartbreaking and wonderful. To me, that is much more interesting to play.

(213): Is London as cold and bleak as it looks on TV?

PP: I think Primrose Hill, which is where we were shooting, is actually so beautiful - those row houses and all the colors. We shot in the fall, so it is very crisp. It stopped raining. It is after the summer, but the cold yuckiness hasn't started yet, and there's this kind of crisp, colorful, witty snap to the place that I think Ol really captures. It is a great backdrop for a fast, witty, little film.

(213): What initially intrigued you about Imagine Me & You?

PP: This may sound horrible, but initially, Thandie Newton was going to play Lena Headey's role. I'm a big fan of her work. People I'm a fan of, I am constantly saying to every single person I meet that if you know anybody who can get me into the film, I want to work with so and so or so and so. And I've always wanted to work with Thandie Newton, so the first time the script came up - more than a year before we actually made it - they said that there was a part in the Thandie Newton film and did I want to try it. I read it and then Thandie didn't do it, but I was now obsessed with the script itself. It's funny and romantic. American romantic comedies are either really funny, but not really that romantic, or big love stories with jokes that fall flat. This one is both, which is well balanced and hard to do.

(213): After the success of Coyote Ugly, you must have been atop everyone's hot list. Why didn't you exploit that and make more mainstream studio films?

PP: I was a little intimidated by Coyote Ugly. It was only my third movie and it was really a level of production and work that I was not aware even existed, let alone try and execute something of that size was intimidating. I was a theater student, waitressing in New York. It was big. So I needed to get back into my own body a little bit and get my center of gravity back down and remember who I was for a minute and why I was doing it. Léa Pool's script, which I did next, Lost and Delirious spoke to me immediately. There was a pile of things that I was reading and I meant to read it one night and finish it in the morning, but I stayed up all night and finished it and read it again, sort of sobbing and loving it. I thought, "This is how I will find myself again."

(213): Were you surprised as the success of Cheaper by the Dozen?

PP: Not that much. Steve Martin is a genius - in many respects, not just acting. He's a really intelligent artist and very competent and able to carry a picture of that size, sort of bombastic, wild, bizarre hugeness. People need that kind of movie. You need a movie that you can take your whole family to at Christmas and everybody can go and not have half the family wishing they were in the other theater.

(213): The studio made the obvious sequel. Did you enjoy the process more the second time around?

PP: The first one making so much money didn't make me relax. Adam Shankman, who made the second one, is a good director. It was interesting to work with him. Also, to work with actors a second time - you know them already. You have a little history with them, so you're not just starting from the opening notes. You're kind of starting further on because you have some knowledge of each other. So it was kind of easier with all the same people in the same family. You have a little family history and that helps.

(213): Cheaper by the Dozen 2 made a ton of money. Since Cheaper by the Dozen seems like a license to print money, will you do a third?

PP: They haven't spoken to me about that.

(213): That's a yes.

PP: The kids are all growing up. We would have to start soon. I don't know how we would do that.

(213): Pull a Matrix and shoot three and four back to back.

PP: I like children, but I don't know about that.

(213): Did you enjoy dipping your toe into action films with The Cave?

PP: I enjoyed working with those actors. It was difficult because we were in Romania and it was physically grueling and very uncomfortable. It was dirty and dark and cold, Romania. It was challenging.

(213): You were a member of the National Honor Society and graduated summa cum laude from OU. You're a total nerd. You give hope to all young nerdy girls that they too can grow up a hottie.

PP: Thanks. I am still kind of a nerd. I don't know. I just hope that all, not just the nerdy girls, I hope everybody can eventually feel OK about who they are. It is hard when you're young.