Piper Perabo and the Two Year Acting Program

Aug 11, 20162 min read

Recently, the Maggie Flanigan Studio had the opportunity to bring back alum Piper Perabo for an incredibly inspiring talkback with our students and friends about her career and the two year acting program.

Piper has been extremely busy since finishing our two year professional actor-training program, rooted in the Meisner Technique. She recently wrapped up 5 seasons on the critically acclaimed USA series Covert Affairs (which included a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress), and is currently preparing for her new show Notorious, which will air on ABC this fall.

Piper was one of the lucky few that arrived in NYC out of college and quickly found some commercial success in highly popular indie films. After a decade of work, Piper kept finding herself on sets with actors whose work blew her away. She craved the freedom, the spontaneity, and the consistent vividness of the actors she respected.

What Piper discovered was that these actors had one thing in common; a commitment to serious training. So she asked around, “I knew Sam Rockwell, and I came back to the city and I thought he was one of the most flexible actors that I had seen in the city and so I said, ‘Where did you train?’ and he told me about this studio and then I spoke to a couple of other actors that I think are fascinating and dangerous and flexible, and Maggie’s studio kept coming up. So I said, ‘That’s where I’m going to go.’

So I took the Six –Week Summer Intensive and learned so much in 6- weeks that I stopped working for 2 years and did the whole program.”

Now, Piper’s career has gone in the direction she had always dreamed, that of a highly respected artist who takes on rich, complicated, well-written roles in film, television, and the NY stage.

Most actors in this country simply do not understand how much dedication and hard work one must commit to in order to be a first-rate actor. Piper did. The courage it took for someone already experiencing financial and commercial accomplishments to step away for the sake of art, is truly something to admire.

Misguided and Naive Actors

So many young actors who come to NYC and LA with a dream are under the misguided and naïve notion that there isn’t enough time to train. The fear of their possible career passing them by leads many down the road of being another wanna-be, hack actor.

I give all my students this piece of advice; don’t hang out or associate with untalented, lazy, or untrained people. If you build yourself a community of true artists, you will discover that serious actors dedicate themselves to the best professional training available.

As Piper’s career illuminates, regardless of where you are in this most difficult profession, if you ever hope to achieve a long, well-respected career, then you better understand exactly what it means to be a real artist.