Pauley Perrette has been a familiar face to TV viewers since 2003, when she was cast as goth-attired forensic scientist Abby Sciuto on NCIS. While Abby spent years helping the team capture make-believe cr!!minals, Biography pointed out that Perrette herself, ironically, earned a masters degree in criminology with an eye toward fighting crime in real life.
Perrette was instead bitten by the acting bug. After starring in TV advertisements for brands like Volkswagen and Sprint, Perrette won a recurring role in the legal drama M..ur.der One in 1996. At the time, Perrette went by the name Pauley P. After receiving more TV work as a result of her exposure, she was able to make her debut as a series regular in the short-lived comedy That’s Life. Before she was ultimately cast in her life-altering NCIS role, other screen credits for her include the films Almost Famous and My First Mister, as well as another series regular role appearing opposite Jennifer Love Hewitt and Jennifer Garner in the Party of Five spinoff Time of Your Life.
Despite being one of TV’s most popular stars for well over a decade, there’s much that fans may not know about this multitalented, multifaceted performer. Read on to discover the untold truth of Pauley Perrette.
Pauley Perrette spent years as TV’s most-liked female star
Q Scores are used to gauge the popularity of a variety of things, including entertainment and consumer goods. The business, which uses a scoring system to measure celebrities’ attraction, is known as “the recognized industry standard” when it comes to measuring how people react to particular celebrities. It gathers its data via consumer surveys. Pauley Perrette reportedly received an admirable score of 43 points when the organization issued its Performer Q research in January/February 2010 according to Entertainment Weekly.
In the years since, Perrette continued to be a Q score champion. According to The Wrap, by 2018 her score had risen to 44 — impressive, considering that the average score for a female television star was just 21. The next-highest score for a television actress at that time was Empire’s Taraji P. Henson, with 36 points — certainly higher than average, but a full eight points behind Perrette.
The fact that NCIS was the most viewed TV show in the world for eight years may have been somewhat attributed to Perrette’s high Q score. The irony, however, was that the 2018 Q score was revealed just days before her farewell episode aired and after she had announced her departure from the show.