Liza Weil

Liza Weil was auditioning for roles before she had even reached her teens and that persistence led to theatre work, shorts, and feature film credits that helped secure the television part that brought the New Jersey native to prominence. Weil's praised turn as an alienated teenager in the low-budget drama "Whatever" (1998) opened some doors, though her subsequent film appearances were mostly in other independent productions that did not break out beyond the usual venues. However, she was also seen in the widely distributed genre features "Stir of Echoes" (1998) and "Dragonfly" (2002), and became familiar to the television audiences upon being added to the cast of "Gilmore Girls" (The WB, 2000-07), where her sarcastic overachieving character Paris Gellar was one of the program's main draws. Once Weil's career started rolling, she was rarely at a loss for work and jumped from stage to films to television, including memorable guest spots on programs like The West Wing" (NBC, 1999-2006) and "ER" (NBC, 1994- 2009). Weil also garnered a lot of attention for her fine dramatic work on "Scandal" (ABC, 2012 - ), where she played a former White House intern who claimed to have been impregnated by the president; that story arc led to a series regular role at attorney Bonnie Winterbottom on producer Shonda Rhimes' next project "How To Get Away With Murder" (ABC 2014- ). Weil was shrewd enough to vary the sort of characters she undertook and thus had ample opportunity to display her proficiency with both comedic and dramatic material.