Education
Fordham University; Tisch School of the Arts.
Fordham University; Tisch School of the Arts.
She made her film debut in the drama Dark Matter (2007), alongside Meryl Streep. Schilling also starred as Veronica Flanagan Callahan in the short-lived National Broadcasting Company medical drama Mercy (2009-2010). Her other films include Atlas Shrugged: Participant 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 Massachusetts Institute of Technology administrator, and Robert J. Schilling, a former prosecutor. A fan of the National Broadcasting Company medical drama Emergency 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 National Broadcasting Company medical drama Mercy, 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. She portrayed Dagny Taggart in Atlas Shrugged: Participant 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, 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.