Peri Gilpin

Early life

Gilpin was born in Waco, Texas, as Peri Oldham, daughter of James Franklin Oldham and his wife Sandra Jo Hauck. Her parents divorced and her mother remarried, to Allen W Gilpin Jr., in 1969. Peri then took her stepfather's surname.

Gilpin grew up in Dallas, where her family encouraged her acting abilities. After studying at the Dallas Theater Center, she pursued acting at the University of Texas at Austin and the British-American Academy in London. She began using the name "Peri Gilpin" after becoming a professional actress.

Her birthfather Jim became a Philadelphia weatherman and radio disc jockey, using the stage name Jim O'Brien. He died in a skydiving accident on September 25, 1983.

Career

Gilpin appeared on the TV series Cheers, playing Holly Matheson in the 21st episode of the 11th season.

From 1993 until 2004, Gilpin played Roz Doyle in the television series Frasier, a spin-off of Cheers, starring Kelsey Grammer as Frasier Crane, the role he had played on Cheers since 1984. Along with the principal cast, Gilpin won a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series in 2000.

In 2009, Gilpin appeared in the ABC Family drama Make It or Break It, for which she received a Gracie Award in the category of "Outstanding Female Actor in a Supporting Role in a Drama Series".

Gilpin and Frasier co-star Jane Leeves ran a production company, "Bristol Cities" (named from the cockney rhyming slang), whose projects included a Fox network pilot titled Minister of Divine, an American remake of the British sitcom The Vicar of Dibley, with Kirstie Alley (another Cheers regular) in a starring role. However, the pilot was not picked up by the network.

Gilpin is the voice artist for the character Jane Proudfoot in Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. She also provided the voices of Desiree in the Nickelodeon animated television series Danny Phantom, Volcana in Superman: The Animated Series and Justice League, Hecate in Hercules: The Animated Series, and Kate Corrigan in the Hellboy animated films. Gilpin also did voice work for several Wells Fargo and Johnsonville Meats TV commercials.

Gilpin has appeared on the television series Medium and Desperate Housewives. She has a supporting role on the television series Make It or Break It, and appeared on Law & Order and Law and Order: Criminal Intent. She starred alongside Teri Polo in the Lifetime movie For the Love of a Child. In 2012, Gilpin guest-starred with another Cheers stalwart, Ted Danson, in CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Currently she also has a small, recurring role in Men at Work on TBS as editor of Full Steam magazine. In the second season of Scorpion, she was introduced as Katherine Cooper, a superior in homeland security above the Scorpion team.

Personal life

Since her mother's death from leiomyosarcoma, Gilpin has led efforts for cancer research through The Sarcoma Foundation of America (SFA). Her sister, Patti Jo Wynne (née Oldham), diagnosed with leiomyosarcoma in 2009, participates with SFA by sharing access to her case and sarcoma awareness advocacy; she was once married to restaurateur Shannon Wynne. Patti and Marc and April Gilpin, their half-siblings by her mother's second marriage, also are actors with credits of their own. Some of them also have children: Sam, Spencer, Daisy and Presley, making Peri an aunt.

Gilpin married realist painter Christian Vincent on July 31, 1999 at Kelsey Grammer's house. The couple have twins, Stella Mae and Ava Pearl, born by a surrogate mother on May 7, 2004. She is godmother to Frasier co-star Jane Leeves's daughter Isabella, and Leeves is godmother to Peri's daughter Stella. Gilpin and Leeves also have lived near the ocean, next door to each other, in the greater Los Angeles area.