Eliza Coupe
Eliza Coupe
Eliza Kate Coupe is an American actress and comedian, most widely known for starring as Jane Kerkovich-Williams in the ABC comedy series Happy Endings and as Denise "Jo" Mahoney in the final two seasons of the medical comedy-drama Scrubs. In 2014, she starred in the short-lived USA Network comedy series Benched...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionTV Actress
Date of Birth6 April 1981
CityPlymouth, NH
CountryUnited States of America
There's such an odd, eclectic group of people that make up the town of Plymouth, New Hampshire. I don't think I could avoid not coming out of there with a pretty good sense of humor.
I'd say I'm a pretty intense person. I'm definitely not my Denise character on 'Scrubs,' nor my Jane character on 'Happy Endings,' but I'm a mix of the two. I really feel that I'm kind of every character that I've ever played; it's just a part of me. And I am a bit of a control freak like Jane. I'm very, perhaps, obsessive like that.
I'm always working out; I did ice hockey in high school, but I'm not a dance person. I mean, this was horrible, but I had a dance double in my high-school musical.
I definitely want to do more movies, and I'm also a writer, so I have a few screenplays that I'm working on, one of them based off my one-woman show that I used to do in New York. Two of the screenplays I've written by myself, and then I'm also working on one with my writing partner, Tom Riley, who's in London.
I would love to do a dramatic comedy. All of that, it all interests me. At some point I want to do my 'Monster,' like Charlize Theron, so I'm buckling up for that.
I was very disruptive. I was horrible. I didn't learn like all the other kids. I had to sometimes take my tests out in the hallways because I couldn't focus. But, my teachers would come see me in the plays and were like 'I don't understand how you can focus and be in the moment in a play and you go into math class and you can't focus.
I was trained classically, and that's something that I want to do, but I do want to say that right now it's a good market for female comedians, and I want to explore that right now. I really do want to do dramas and meatier roles, especially film.
I was the female lead in a romantic comedy. It's a little indie film that we shot in China called 'America Town,' starring Daniel Henney and Bill Paxton. I actually had to speak Chinese in the film. It was funny because I found out I was doing the film and then a week later, I was in Shanghai.
I was on a show called '12 Miles of Bad Road' with Lily Tomlin - it was an incredible HBO show. We shot 6 episodes, previewed it before the finale of 'The Sopranos;' it was written up as a 'Great New Show on HBO,' and then the whole thing was canned. Gone. Disappeared. That's when I realized anything can happen in this business.
I made sure that instead of people making fun of me, like every comedian probably says, I made fun of myself first so they would get distracted and just laugh. I was pretty brutally picked on for a while growing up. It was always the really pretty girls, the hot girls and then there was me. So I had to do something to get any sort of attention.
If I'm not clear with the character, I can't do anything with it. But once I get that character, the possibilities are endless. When you have such a defined character, I feel like I can actually read the phone book and make it funny.
I'm a kid from New Hampshire who's pretty normal.
I still have a crush on Johnny Depp, and I literally only started dating my husband because he looked like Johnny Depp - and he knows that. We've been together for twelve years, and he still looks like Johnny Depp.