Miranda Otto is an Australian actress born on December 16, 1967, to actors Lindsay and Barry Otto, and sister of actress Gracie Otto. She began her acting career at the age of eighteen, performing in various independent and major studio films.
Otto's first major film appearance was in the 1986 film Emma's War, where she played a teenager moving to Australia's bush country during World War II. She went on to star in films such as Love Serenade, Doing Time for Patsy Cline, The Well, Dead Letter Office, and In the Winter Dark, earning her third Australian Film Institute nomination.
After a decade of critically acclaimed roles in Australian films, Otto gained Hollywood's attention with supporting roles in The Thin Red Line and What Lies Beneath. She then appeared in Human Nature, The Way We Live Now, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, earning an Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films nomination for Best Supporting Actress.
Director Steven Spielberg was impressed by Otto's performance in The Lord of the Rings and asked her to play opposite Tom Cruise in War of the Worlds. Otto, pregnant at the time, believed she would have to turn down the role, but the script was reworked to accommodate her.
Her next project was playing the lead in the Australian film Danny Deckchair, followed by the Australian television miniseries Through My Eyes: The Lindy Chamberlain Story, for which she won Most Outstanding Actress in a Drama Series at the 2005 Logie Awards.
In 2007, Otto starred as Cricket Stewart in the television miniseries The Starter Wife, and had a starring role in the 2008 American television series Cashmere Mafia and Australian films such as In Her Skin and Blessed. She also starred in the horror prequel Annabelle: Creation and portrayed Zelda Spellman in Netflix's Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.
Miranda Otto made her theatrical debut in the 1986 production of The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant for the Sydney Theatre Company, followed by three more productions in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In 2002, she returned to the stage playing Nora Helmer in A Doll's House opposite her future husband Peter O'Brien, earning her a 2003 Helpmann Award nomination and the MO Award for "Best Female Actor in a Play". Her next stage role was in the psychological thriller Boy Gets Girl in 2005.
