Jacoba Francisca Maria (Cobie) Smulders was born on April 3rd 1982 in Vancouver, British Columbia. Her father was Dutch and her mother is of British decent. Oddly enough she describes herself as, “a fluent listener” of the French language. She was also named after her mother’s aunt “Cobie”. She is best known for her work, on the television show ‘How I Met Your Mother’, where she played the character Robin Scherbatsky.
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Smulders studied acting in High School but got her career started in modeling and almost didn’t become an actress because of it. She has been quoted as saying,
“You know you go into these rooms, and I've had the experience of people judging you physically for so long and I was over that. But then it was like, Oh no, I have to actually perform. I have to do well, and I have to have a voice, and I have to have thoughts now.”
She had original wanted to be a marine biologist but the work load was too much for her to handle so she fell back on acting. She describes this transition as,
“I studied acting throughout high school, then modeling took over because it brought more opportunity. When I quit modeling, coming back to Vancouver, I registered at the University of Victoria. At the same time, that summer, I was taking acting classes and decided to give that a year or two instead of going back to school. I always wanted to go back to school. I was looking into taking some classes part-time, but marine biology involves a lot of lab time.”
Smulder’s first acting role was, a guest spot, on the show ‘Jeremiah’. The Showtime science fiction series would lead her to other small parts including, a role on ‘The L Word’. And a fulltime role on the series ‘Veritas: The Quest’. It only ran for one season. After it’s cancellation she auditioned for the role of Robin Scherbatsky on the series ‘How I Met Your Mother’ and got the part in 2005. She would remain there for the rest of the shows airing, a total of nine seasons.
Her next break would come in the form of an Off- Broadway play ‘Love, Loss; and What I Wore’ which played at the Westside Theater.
Two years later she found herself playing the role of Maria Hill in the blockbuster film ‘The Avengers’. For her role she went through training with the team instructor for S.W.A.T., in a failed attempt to handle weapons properly. She would reprise the role in future features such as ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’ in 2014 and again in the ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’ in 2015. Cobie also had brief parts in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, a televisions series based on the films. Joss Whedon had considered her for the role of Wonder Woman but the film never went into production. She did provide the voice for the Lego version of Wonder Woman in the animated film ‘The Lego movie’. It was Wonder Woman’s first appearance in a feature film ever.
In 2013, she had small supporting roles on the films, ‘Safe Haven’, ‘Delivery Man’, and ‘They Came Together’. She was supposed to play the role of Harriet Grant in the made-for-tv movie ‘Confirmation’ but after breaking her leg, the role went to Zoe Lister-Jones.
A year later she found herself playing in the comedy-drama The Intervention’ and in ‘Jack Reacher: Never Go Back’. And in 2017 she decided to take on a reoccurring character “Mother” in ‘A Series of Unfortunate Events’ on Netflix.
Last Modified: Mar 8, 2020
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