In 2000’s Coyote Ugly, Piper Perabo played a plucky young woman from New Jersey who moves to New York to make it in the music industry. In true Hollywood fashion, she lands a job, not as a simple waitress, but as a bartender at a fabled establishment where water is never served and the beautiful employees routinely dance on flaming countertops. A year later, she appeared in Lost & Delirious as the brooding Paulie, a boarding school lesbian with a penchant for fencing and a doomed crush on a classmate. This spring, she plays Rachel in the romantic comedy Imagine Me & You. Rachel is a young bride finally marching down the aisle with her perfectly charming boyfriend of five years. Unfortunately for her perfectly charming boyfriend, it is on her way down the aisle that she first locks eyes with Luce (Lena Headey), the wedding florist. Luce eventually progresses from tastefully arranging flowers for the bride, to tastefully arranging herself and the bride atop a pile of flowers.

In the movie, one of the characters says, “anyone can cross over,” and that becomes a theme. Do you think that’s true?
Well, sure. I think that who you fall in love with is definitely not something you can plan. Hopefully, everybody has the opportunity just once to meet someone you really love.

You played a lesbian in Lost & Delirious as well. What attracts you to queer roles?
I think the writing for both of these films was really good. They’re whole women. They’re not just somebody’s girlfriend in the background of an action film. Both of these roles were just beautiful, whole people, and I think that’s just interesting to me.

Do you think you approach playing a lesbian character any differently now than you did five years ago?
That’s an interesting question. I think I do. I think when I made Lost & Delirious, I was younger, and that character and her understanding of love was a much younger understanding. Paulie is a little bit obsessed with herself and not really seeing that she’s hurting the woman she is in love with. Originally, I took the role because I thought, God, she’s a fucking hero. She’s a hero. Finally, a female hero character. But kind of to the exclusion of the woman she loves. She gets so wrapped up in the saving of her, that she misses it. Whereas in this film, Rachel is really aware that she’s going to hurt one person, because she’s in love with another person, and she’s trying really hard to be honest and grown up about the fact that “I’m in love with this woman. I know it isn’t easy, but I have to be honest about what’s happening. I’m going to be as careful as I can to not be hurtful but still be true to myself.” And that’s really different. And I don’t know if I would have understood that as well five years ago.

Do you ever worry about being pigeonholed as an actress who plays gay women?
That would not … make me worry. They’re strong. The ones that are onscreen are written really smart. It’s better than being typecast as the girl from Coyote Ugly.

In Coyote Ugly, you’re playing to male desire a lot, and then in Imagine Me & You you’re playing, at least partially, to female desire. Do you think you play to each differently, or is there no difference?
I think in Coyote Ugly, although maybe the film as a whole is in some ways framed for male desire — that wasn’t what I was playing. The character is really, a little bit, on her own. She kind of has a love interest, but it’s really about a girl who’s trying to stand up on her own two feet. It’s the same with this film. Rachel isn’t playing for female desire. She didn’t even know that the person who would be the love of her life was a woman until she saw her. And when she saw her, she was about to marry a man. She can barely keep her feet on the ground, poor Rachel. It spins you around a little bit when you get knocked out by love like that.

You were in another film, The Cave, with Lena Headey, who plays Rachel’s love interest, Luce. Was it a coincidence that you guys ended up in another film together?
It wasn’t. We did The Cave first. We were the only women in a very testosterone-heavy action film. We’re in a foreign country, underground, in the dirt, and it was not that nice. I was lucky that she was a really amazing woman, and right away I was like, “What’s the Romanian word for beer?” and we’d go off together to just hang out with another woman. We became really good friends. So when Imagine Me & You came up and Lena was being considered for a lead, she was on the phone with me immediately asking “Have you seen this script? Have you read this character?” And the two of us were plotting to get [writer-director] Ol Parker to let me play Rachel.

What other projects can we expect to see you in, and will you be playing more gay roles in the future?
In the movie I’m in right now, I’m straight. I play Diane Keaton’s oversexed, neurotic daughter. It’s hilarious to work with a woman like Diane Keaton. Sort of dreamy, I have to say. She’s a magnificent woman. Magnificent. Intelligent, politically astute, artistic. She’s got a rockin’ bod for 60. I’m kind of infatuated with her.

It sounds like you have a crush on her.
I do! I follow her around like a puppy. It’s embarrassing. I’m just going to embarrass myself.

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