Poppy Petal Donahue is a native of Paddington, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. She was raised in Australia by her mother, Nicola, a market researcher, and father, Phil, a restaurateur. Being taunted with names such as Sloppy Poppy, Poopy Poppy and Floppy Poppy at school did not make for a pleasant experience, so she left at the legal age of 14 years and 9 months. After leaving school she took on a job waitressing at one of her father's restaurants, but claims to have been a horrible waitress and was fired by her father.
At the age of 16 Poppy left home to travel around Bali with her then boyfriend. Two years later she decided to head for the states, following an American exchange student she was in love with who had been a school friend of her brother's in Sydney. She flew to Florida to pursue him, but the relationship fizzled down within a week and she found herself nearly broke in Sarasota. She had connections in New York and Los Angeles, and when the New York friends weren't home to answer her call, she got on a Greyhound bus and headed for Los Angeles in hopes of an acting career, adopting her mother's maiden name of Montgomery. Staying at her friend's house in Los Angeles where she would drive around to auditions she sent a head shot nearly every day to Julia Robert's former manager, Bob McGowan, whom she had read about in a book entitled "How to Make it in Hollywood". He said that he didn't "handle unknowns," but Poppy was persistent, and he eventually found some agents for Poppy to meet with who then signed her. Her first gig was in a Carl's Jr. commercial that never aired.
Between early guest appearances on television shows such as "Party of Five" and "NYPD Blue", and small roles in films such as "Devil in a Blue Dress" with Denzel Washington, Poppy worked at The Gap clothing store. Her break came in 1996 when she was cast as a member of the critically acclaimed, yet low-rated television show "Relativity". Also in 1996, Poppy had a starring role in the Sci-Fi TV movie "The Cold Equations" with Bill Campbell. In 1998 she landed her first prominent big screen role in "Dead Man on Campus" with Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Tom Everett Scott. She soon found herself acting alongside veterans such as Diane Keaton and Eddie Murphy in the films "The Other Sister" and "Life", respectively, both in 1999. By 2000 she had completed the critically acclaimed independent feature "This Space Between Us" and the short film "Men Named Milo, Women Named Greta". Also in 2000, she starred in another television show, the short-lived UPN cop series "The Beat". Her last show before finally landing a hit with CBS's "Without a Trace" was the WB's low-rated thriller "Glory Days".
In 2001, Poppy landed her dream role and portrayed Marilyn Monroe in the 4 hour television mini-series "Blonde", based on Joyce Carol Oates' fictional novel of the same title. She received rave reviews for her performance. Poppy stopped working out and doing yoga in order to to gain about 12 pounds for the role to obtain the lush figure of Marilyn Monroe. Recently she was seen playing Julia Bellows in the CBS TV movie "Raising Waylon". She's currently starring as the female lead, agent Samantha Spade, on the hit CBS drama "Without a Trace", Thursdays at 10pm. You can also see Poppy in the upcoming indie flick "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover", which made it's premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival on May 5, 2004.
