Date of Birth

14 December 1993, Los Angeles, California, USA

Birth Name

Miranda Taylor Cosgrove

Height

5' 6" (1.68 m)

Mini Biography

Miranda Taylor Cosgrove was born May 14, 1993 in Los Angeles, California, to Christina (Casey) and Tom Cosgrove, who owns a dry-cleaning business. She was discovered at a young age singing and dancing around a table in a restaurant, where an agent saw her talent and quickly signed her. Miranda's career started with commercials for Burger King, McDonalds and more as she auditioned for many roles and finally won her first role as the band's manager in the movie, School of Rock (2003).

While filming School of Rock (2003) in New York, she was informed that her pilot Drake & Josh (2004) had been picked up. She co-starred as Drake and Josh's little sister, while making brief appearances on other Nickelodeon shows, before landing in her own show for the network, iCarly (2007). Her iCarly (2007) popularity helped her launch a singing career, and she was named an MTV Pop Rookie for 2009. Her debut album, "Sparks Fly", was released in 2010 and reached #8 on the Billboard 200 chart, along with two EPs: "About You Now" in 2009, and "High Maintenance" in 2011.

While continuing her singing career, Miranda has expanded upon her voice-over work for the children's movies, including Here Comes Peter Cottontail: The Movie (2005), and the Despicable Me (2010) films and related shorts, as well as expanding her film work with Yours, Mine & Ours (2005), Keeping Up with the Steins (2006) and The Wild Stallion (2009). Her TV reach has extended beyond Nickelodeon, with an appearance on the CBS legal drama The Good Wife (2009) during the show's second season. She has served as a spokesperson for Neutrogena skin care products since 2010.

She lives in Los Angeles with her family.

Trivia

• Played the sister of Drake Bell in both Drake & Josh (2004) and Yours, Mine & Ours (2005).
• Her role models are Anne Hathaway and Rachel McAdams.
• She began homeschooling after elementary school.
• Favorite artists are Gwen Stefani, Avril Lavigne and Paramore.
• Favorite movie is Mean Girls (2004).
• She became a promotional brand ambassador when she signed with Neutrogena skin care (Feb. 12, 2010).
• She had a dog named Pearl. Pearl died in 2012 and Miranda now has a new dog named Penny.
• Broke her ankle in a tour bus accident August 11, 2011. She had to walk with crutches for a couple of months and the rest of the tour was canceled.
• Was named the highest-paid child actress by Guinness World Records in 2011.
• As of 2011 she's contemplating getting her ears pierced after seeing some earrings that made her want to pierce her ears. Announced on Instagram in 2013, "Got my ears pierced today #alittlelate".
• She has English, Irish, French, and Mexican ancestry. Her maternal grandfather, William Frank Casey, was the son of an Irish-born father, William, and a Mexican-born mother, Mary.
• She auditioned for the role of Maddy In the movie Piranha 3DD (2012), but lost it to Danielle Panabaker.

Quotes

• I definitely have guys that I'm friends with that I have a crush on, and you don't want to ruin the friendship.
• As far as movies, I love 'The Notebook.' I always say that I wish I could play Rachel McAdams' character. She's amazing. That's the movie every girl wants to be in.
• I want to get the message out that everybody can make a difference.
• I'm not that rebellious. There's a part of me that wishes I was that.
• I love entertaining people and making them laugh. It's my favorite thing to do.
• I write songs all the time in my room. I play them for my friends and family.
• Everybody in L.A. wants to be an actor. I just wish I could meet somebody who doesn't act or sing.
• I do home schooling. I went to regular school until fifth grade, and then I started doing home schooling, which it's completely different. I have a teacher on set with me and I just work with her, one-on-one.
• My dad went to USC and it always had been very important to me and my family.
• I'm on the Web a lot. I like to play games online. Sometimes I play Sims.
• It scared my mom to death when all my friends started driving. She always told me she wanted me to drive, but I think she kind of felt lucky that I didn't get my permit when all my friends did. I think that's been the hardest thing for her, watching me go out with my friends and literally drive away.
• I'm more into, like, colour than, like, the type of car and stuff. I don't know much about cars, so I'm just more into picking the right color.
• I love entertaining and making people laugh. It's my favorite thing to do.
• My mom is a really good cook. I didn't get the cooking gene, but she cooks this really amazing dinner every Christmas, and that's always really fun.
• I don't have any siblings, but I have best friends that I have known since kindergarten that I'm protective of. If they call me and tell me someone was mean to them at school - I want to go to school and be mean to that person and try to stand up for them.
• A big part of why I wanted to go to college is to meet people and make friends.
• I like the old, classic scary movies. I love 'Psycho,' 'The Sixth Sense,' and 'Poltergeist.'
• Growing up, my next door neighbor was my best friend and an only child too.
• My two best friends have gone through break-ups that were really hard, and I remember thinking, 'How could this be so hard and important to them?' Literally for months they were really upset and they couldn't get over it. I had no idea what it was like. And now that I've been through it, I totally understand.
• I do text a lot. Sometimes, at night, my thumbs hurt because I've texted so much, so I definitely text too much.
• I love getting my nails done. My mom's best friend is a manicurist. When I was little, she'd do little paintings on my nails, like flowers.
• I think the Beatles are a lot of people's favorite band.
• I want to go to college, and I want to keep acting and singing.
• I really love music but I've always wanted to act.
• I love theater. Like, every time I go to New York, I see a play.
• I'm a big tandem bike rider... I've had a tandem bike since I was 12, and I wanna be a competitive tandem bike rider one day.
• I've been acting for a while, but theater is pretty different. I've never been in a play.
• I've feel like I've been doing TV shows most of my life.
• I've only had one serious boyfriend, but we dated for three years.
• I've seen all the Judd Apatow movies, and I'd love to have a really funny little part in one of them some day.
• My ideal guy would be funny and fun to be around.
• The first time someone called me a role model, I remember thinking, 'What does that mean?' But I feel aware of it when I'm reading scripts.
• Some of my favorite movies are just movies that are just good stories, and aren't necessarily big budget movies or anything.
• My room is never clean. I play 'Guitar Hero' all the time and throw things around my room.
• My parents never said I had to be 16 to date, but that has been the rule for all my friends.
• I've had journals ever since I was really little. Sometimes I write poems and stuff, but for the most part I write down what happens to me during the day that I don't want to forget. So I have books filled with little things like that.
• I like James Franco. I think he's really cute. I remember a while ago there was a rumor going around that he was getting married and all my friends and I were freaking out. Yeah, I think he's cute!
• With the iCarly (2007) soundtrack, I didn't get to write any of the songs. I just picked songs that meant a lot to me that I really liked.
• I feel like I hadn't given that many classic films, like, a really good chance. I watched 'Casablanca' a really long time ago when I was like, 12. I didn't like it that much, and then when I saw it again in class, I loved it.
• I love getting my nails done. My mom's best friend is a manicurist. When I was little, she'd do little paintings on my nails, like flowers. She comes to our house. It's the best.
• My friends and I have always loved the Neutrogena brand and their ability to help inspire confidence. So when I found out I was actually going to be part of the Neutrogena family, I was really excited.
• I'm lucky because my two best friends are from kindergarten so they never thought that it was a big deal that I was in acting; they don't even ever talk about it. They still act all confused, like, 'What's going on?' when we go places and people come up to me.
• I love making iCarly (2007) it's so much fun, and I love getting the script every week and not really knowing what insane thing I'm going to be doing. It's just like an adventure every episode; that's really fun.
• I had to take the driver's test twice. And they don't make you parallel park anymore, but you can't hit the curb when you're backing up. And I hit the curb.
• Even with college, the reason I wanted to go so badly is because I wanted to major in film. I want to take screenwriting classes and learn more about behind the scenes stuff, because I love people like Steve Carell and Kristen Wiig who are able to write a lot of their own material and be so involved in everything they do.
• When I was 5, I started taking singing lessons, and then, after 'School of Rock,' I started taking guitar lessons. I would always write songs and play them for my friends, and I would play my guitar on the set a lot.
• Sometimes I get kind of bored if I go like a month or so and I'm not doing anything. At first I'm like, 'Cool, I'll have a little time off and I'll get to hang out with friends,' but then after a little while goes by I'm like, 'Oh,' and I really wish that I could go back and start doing work again.