Miranda Otto

Miranda Otto born December 16 1967 is an Australian actress The daughter of actors Lindsay and Barry Otto and the sister of actress Gracie Otto she began acting at age eighteen and has performed in a variety of independent and major studio films Her first major film appearance was in the 1986 film Emmas War in which she played a teenager who moves to Australias bush country during World War II In 1996 director Shirley Barrett cast Otto as a shy waitress in the film Love Serenade She starred in the 1997 films Doing Time for Patsy Cline and The Well for which earned her third Australian Film Institute nomination Her next project was the romantic comedy Dead Letter Office 1998 The film was Ottos first with her father Barry who makes a brief appearance Later that year she starred in the film In the Winter Dark directed by James Bogle for which she was nominated for her fourth Australian Film Institute Award After a decade of critically acclaimed roles in Australian films she gained Hollywoods attention after appearing in supporting roles in The Thin Red Line 1998 and What Lies Beneath 2000 In 2001 she was cast as a naturalist in the comedy Human Nature and appeared in the BBC adaptation of Anthony Trollopes The Way We Live Now as a strongwilled American Southerner Her breakthrough role came in 2002 when she portrayed Éowyn in The Lord of the Rings trilogy Her character was introduced in the trilogys second film The Lord of the Rings The Two Towers in 2002 and appeared in the third film The Lord of the Rings The Return of the King the following year Her performance earned her an Academy of Science Fiction Fantasy Horror Films nomination for Best Supporting Actress Director Steven Spielberg impressed by Ottos performance in The Lord of the Rings called her to ask if she would play opposite Tom Cruise in the bigbudget science fiction film War of the Worlds 2005 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 2003 She then took on the Australian television miniseries Through My Eyes The Lindy Chamberlain Story 2004 At the 2005 Logie Awards Otto won Most Outstanding Actress in a Drama Series for her role In 2007 Otto starred as Cricket Stewart the wife of a successful director in the television miniseries The Starter Wife She had a starring role in the 2008 American television series Cashmere Mafia and Australian films such as In Her Skin and Blessed 2009 She starred opposite Stephanie Sigman and Anthony LaPaglia in the horror prequel Annabelle Creation She portrayed Zelda Spellman in Netflixs Chilling Adventures of Sabrina 20182020 She made her theatrical debut in the 1986 production of The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant for the Sydney Theatre Company28 Three more theatrical productions for the Sydney Theatre Company followed in the late 1980s and early 1990s In 2002 she returned to the stage playing Nora Helmer in A Dolls House opposite her future husband Peter OBrien Ottos performance earned 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 2005