Biography

Taylor Schilling (born July 27, 1984) is an American actress. She is known for her role as "Piper Chapman" on the Netflix original comedy-drama series, Orange Is the New Black (2013) (2013-present), for which she won the 2013 Satellite Award for Best Actress in a Television Series - Musical or Comedy, and was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Television Series Drama and the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series in 2014. She made her film debut, in 2007 with Meryl Streep, in the drama, Dark Matter (2007). Schilling also starred as "Veronica Flanagan Callahan" in the short-lived NBC medical drama, Mercy (2009) (2009-10). Her other films include Atlas Shrugged: Part I (2011), the romantic drama The Lucky One (2012) and the political thriller Argo (2012).

Schilling was born on July 27, 1984 in Boston, Massachusetts. She is the daughter of Patricia (née Miller), an MIT administrator, and Robert J. Schilling, a former prosecutor. She grew up in West Roxbury and Wayland, splitting time between her divorced parents. A fan of the NBC medical drama, ER (1994), during her youth, she began acting at a young age. She became active in her middle school's theatre program, when she appeared in a stage production of "Fiddler on the Roof".

After graduating from Wayland High School in 2002, Schilling attended Fordham University's campus at Lincoln Center, where she continued to take part in stage productions, before earning her Bachelor of Arts in 2006. She then entered the graduate program at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts to continue her acting studies, but left after her second year to start auditioning. While attempting to break into acting, she supported herself by working as a nanny for a Manhattan-based family.

Schilling made her feature film debut, with a supporting role in the independent film, Dark Matter (2007). In 2009, she was selected to star in the NBC medical drama, Mercy (2009), as "Nurse Veronica Flanagan Callahan", a tough Iraq War veteran and former military nurse-turned-medical practitioner. Reading for the part via videotape from New York City, she impressed the show's creator and executive producer, Liz Heldens, who then flew her out to Los Angeles to audition for the role. In Heldens' words, "she just blew the doors off the audition". The show ran for one season, from September 2009 to May 2010.

Schilling won the Emerson College Playwright's Festival Outstanding Performance Award. She portrayed "Dagny Taggart" in Atlas Shrugged: Part I (2011), and co-starred with Zac Efron in the romantic drama film, The Lucky One (2012). She currently stars as "Piper Chapman" in the Netflix original series, Orange Is the New Black (2013), based on the Piper Kerman memoir, "Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison". The show premiered on July 11, 2013. For her work on the show, Schilling was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Television Series - Drama and the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series in 2014.

- IMDb Mini Biography By: Akram Braham

Received a Bachelors Degree in Acting in 2006 from Fordham University, Lincoln Center, New York City.

Starred in various college plays at New York University and Fordham University.

Attended and graduated from Wayland High School in Wayland, Massachusetts in 2002.

On her mother's side, is the great-great-granddaughter of artists Henry Brown Fuller and Lucia (Fairchild) Fuller, and great-great-great-granddaughter of figure and portrait painter George Fuller (Lucia's father).

Her father is of Polish and Irish descent, while her mother's ancestry includes German, English, Swedish, Dutch, and Scots-Irish/Northern Irish.

I'm the girl who will show up in jeans no matter what--but the jeans can get fancier and fancier.

I don't do detoxes or cleanses; they don't really work for me.

As an actor, what I'm finding is that I really like the extremes. I think that's really fun to play with.

I didn't spend a lot of time with prison guards, but my father was an assistant district attorney for a long time so I was always hearing stories about prisoners and prison guards.

[on Orange Is the New Black (2013)] There's this pervasive myth that in order for a piece of entertainment to have a crossover audience of men and women, it has to be a predominantly male film. I think this is showing people that women driving their own narrative, in a way that is complicated and dynamic and raw and vulnerable and real, is a hot commodity. People are really interested in that, interested in story and hungry for an authentic voice.