Actors - Liza Weil

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	Actors - Liza Weil

Liza Weil (born June 5, 1977 in New Jersey) is an American actress. She is best known for her role as Paris Geller in the television comedy Gilmore Girls and has guest-starred on The Adventures of Pete & Pete, ER, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and The West Wing.

Biography

Weil was born into a family of actors, and with both of her parents Lisa and Marc touring Europe with their own comedy troupe, The Madhouse Company of London with her in tow, she took on those same acting expectations. However in an with the Boston Globe in 1998 during a publicity tour for her first feature film Whatever, she admitted to having aspirations of becoming an archaeologist in her younger years, because of the Indiana Jones film trilogy and a childhood crush on Harrison Ford.

Early life

In 1984 (at the age of 7), her family settled down in Lansdale, Pennsylvania, a community north-northwest of Philadelphia. She soon traveled frequently to New York for professional auditions, and acted in productions both off-Broadway and in Philadelphia's theatrical community before pursuing her film and television career. She is a 1995 graduate of the borough's North Penn High School.

Career

Weil continues to be active in the Los Angeles theatrical community during hiatuses, and still occasionally performs in live theater in Philadelphia and New York. She has acted with every member of her family; in 2004, she headlined with her father Marc in a well-received community theater production of Proof at the Montgomery Theater in Souderton, Pennsylvania, just north of her adopted hometown of Lansdale. Her first ever television role in 1994, which was an episode of The Adventures of Pete & Pete called "Yellow Fever", found her playing a bully alongside of her mother Lisa, who played a teacher. Finally her younger sister Samantha shared the screen with Liza in Gilmore Girls's third season finale, "Those Are Strings, Pinocchio". Samantha Weil played a student named Bernadette (who was unrelated to Paris) making out a video yearbook entry in front of an impatient Paris, standing off to the side waiting to make her own.

An alumna of Columbia University, Weil received her first major feature film role co-starring with Kevin Bacon in Stir of Echoes
. Before that role, her first film was the short A Cure For Serpents, where she played the daughter of a mysophobic woman bringing to her home a boyfriend who wasn't as obsessive with cleanliness, and how the mother deals with that. She has also done several short and feature-length independent films, which include Motel Jerusalem, Scar, and Lullaby, and has shown interest in behind-the-camera work.

Personal life

At present, Weil resides in Santa Monica, and is a film and movie buff.

Trivia

Weil was originally considered for the role of Rory Gilmore by Gilmore Girls creator Amy Sherman-Palladino before Alexis Bledel
won the role; the character of Paris Geller was created especially for Weil.
Weil's real-life friend Emily Bergl, known more for her starring role in The Rage: Carrie 2
, appeared on the show several times as Paris' antagonist in student government and leader of a school sorority, Francine Jarvis.
Weil is a natural brunette, and had this hair color through at least 2000; it is believed she was told to dye it dark blonde for her Gilmore Girls role to contrast with Bledel/Rory's brown hair.
Amy Sherman-Palladino has Weil's skin as 'the best she's ever seen in her life'.
In contrast to Paris' character, Weil was a self-avowed average student in high school who focused more on her budding acting career than her studies; in her senior year she had to make up an English class during summer school because of a failing grade.

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