A native New Yorker who studied with famed acting teacher Uta Hagen as a teen, Peet launched her career in a 1995 off-Broadway revival of Awake and Sing!. After a brief stint on One Life to Live she moved to Hollywood. With her strong, perfectly plucked eyebrows and sparkling blue eyes, Peet never lacked for work, appearing in a succession of romantic comedies before landing her breakthrough role as a relationship-challenged twentysomething on the dramedy Jack & Jill. During her tenure she racked up multiple big-screen credits (her turn in the 2000 comedy The Whole Nine Yards earned her a bevy of fans). But instead of settling for being eye candy, Peet began tackling challenging supporting roles that made the most of her intelligence, including a junkie in the indie Igby Goes Down, a hellish bride-to-be in Saving Silverman and a grieving mother in Syriana. In 2006 she took time out from her jam-packed schedule to make her Broadway debut in the 2006 revival of Barefoot in the Park. The production wasn't a success, commercially or critically, but she soon bounced back, landing a flashy part as a TV-network president in Aaron Sorkin's series set behind the scenes of a late-night sketch-comedy show, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.