Cobie Smulders

From Japanese Runways to the Pavement of New York

Jacoba Francisca Maria Smulders never wanted to be a model. She took modeling contracts in Japan and France because they helped pay the bills, but she hated being judged solely on her looks. So she returned to Vancouver to enroll in acting classes and make her way through local film shoots.

And the gamble paid off.

In 2005, she landed the role of Robin Scherbatsky in the series How I Met Your Mother. It was an unexpected entry into the Los Angeles industry, as the pilot became a phenomenon that ran for nine seasons. Her character avoided the clichés of the romantic comedy heroine by using sarcasm and an almost aggressive independence as a shield.

The Price of Special Effects

Her big break at the box office came in 2012. Joss Whedon cast her as Maria Hill in The Avengers for her ability to stay composed in front of a green screen. She signed a long-term contract that tied her to the Marvel franchise for more than a decade across various platforms.

But massive success coincided with an extremely difficult personal journey.

At age 25, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer while filming the third season of her flagship series. She didn't share this information with the public until 2015. That physical ordeal shaped her later career decisions and led her to seek out projects that would let her spend more time with her family in New York.

The Search for Complex Characters

In 2019, she starred in Stumptown. She played Dex Parios, a war veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder who works as a private investigator in Portland. The series received praise for its dry, straightforward tone but was canceled after one season due to logistical problems stemming from the 2020 health crisis.

In 2021, she switched gears to play conservative columnist Ann Coulter in Impeachment: American Crime Story. It was a complex character transformation that required hours of prosthetics and an exhaustive study of the real journalist's body language.

Because Smulders prefers grit to the artificial glitter of celebrity.

During filming of Secret Invasion in 2023, she spent weeks shooting action sequences on location in London and Leeds. The production of this six-episode series had an estimated budget of $212 million.