Pauley Per­rette is best known for play­ing Abby Sci­uto on the U.S. TV series NCIS. She is also a pub­lished writer, a singer and civil rights advocate.
Per­rette has worked for years in tele­vi­sion and film, mostly doing com­mer­cials, voice-overs, music videos and short films, and worked as a bar­tender in New York City. It was while work­ing odd jobs in New York a friend intro­duced her to an adver­tis­ing agency direc­tor. From then on accord­ing to Per­rette I started book­ing com­mer­cials like crazy!. This prompted her move to Los Ange­les, where she had a vari­ety of bit parts and made sev­eral guest appear­ances.
In 2001, as a recur­ring char­ac­ter intro­duced in Sea­son 2 of Spe­cial Unit 2, she played Alice Cramer, the Unit’s pub­lic rela­tions per­son. She then landed her cur­rent role, play­ing Abby Sci­uto, an eccen­tric foren­sic sci­en­tist, on NCIS, a TV series based on the Naval Crim­i­nal Inves­tiga­tive Ser­vice. Perrette’s ini­tial appear­ances as the char­ac­ter were on two episodes of JAG aired in spring of 2003 that served as a back­door pilot and intro­duced the char­ac­ters. She has since appeared as Abby in two 2009 episodes of NCIS: Los Ange­les. As of August 2011, she had the high­est Q Score (a mea­sure­ment of the famil­iar­ity and appeal) of any actor on a U.S. prime time show.
She also appeared as a wait­ress at Cafe Ner­vosa in Frasier dur­ing sea­son 4 (in the episode “Three Dates and a Break Up”), and later guest starred in sea­son one of 24. She has made appear­ances in sev­eral films, includ­ing The Ring and Almost Famous.
In addi­tion to act­ing, Per­rette is a pub­lished poet, writer (her short story “Cheers…” appears in the anthol­ogy Pills, Thrills, Chills, and Heartache: Adven­tures in the First Per­son), pho­tog­ra­pher, and spoken-word artist, a lover of music of all kinds, and a pas­sion­ate advo­cate for civil rights. In 2007, she pro­duced a doc­u­men­tary about U.S. civil rights attor­ney and author Mark Lane.
In an 2005 inter­view with Craig Fer­gu­son, the host of The Late, Late Show, Per­rette said she has a life­long crime obses­sion. She was an under­grad stu­dent in soci­ol­ogy, psy­chol­ogy, and crim­i­nal sci­ence. She started her master’s degree in crim­i­nal sci­ence before end­ing up in the enter­tain­ment indus­try. She now plays a foren­sic sci­en­tist, her for­mer career goal.
In the January/February 2010 Per­former Q Score, Per­rette tied in the top 3 along­side Tom Hanks and Mor­gan Free­man. She was also the only female to make the top 10.
Perette started appear­ing in tele­vi­sion com­mer­cials for Expedia.com in late 2010. She made a guest appear­ance as a judge on Sea­son 4 Episode 6 of RuPaul’s Drag Race.