Cristin Milioti (born August 16, 1985 in Cherry Hill, New Jersey) is an American actress/performer who got her start in Broadway shows. Her role in the musical adaptation of the 2007 film Once garnered her a Tony nomination and a Grammy win alongside soloist Steve Kazee for Best Musical Theater Album. Her popularity continued to grow throughout the early 2010s when she was given a recurring role in the ninth season of How I Met Your Mother as the elusive mother, introducing TV audiences to her iconic Puppy-Dog Eyes and impressive talent behind a ukulele despite previous small TV roles like Catherine Sacrimoni in The Sopranos and a sketch artist in The Unusuals.
2013 also allowed her to get behind the big screen through a supporting role in Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street, and she received a role in the second season of the anthology crime show Fargo as Lou Solverson's wife, Betsy. In 2014, CBS greenlit the show A to Z in which Milioti played one of the leading characters, but it ended up being short-lived, lasting for one season of thirteen episodes. She's had minor roles as Whitney in The Mindy Project and Sirena in The Venture Bros. and played the leads in a few episodes of anthology series, such as Nanette in Black Mirror: "USS Callister" and as Maggie in Modern Love: "When the Doorman Is Your Main Man". She also played the recurring lead role of Hazel Green in Made For Love.
Filmography:
- The Sopranos (2006–07) as Catherine Sacrimoni
- The Good Wife (2010) as Onya Eggertson
- 30 Rock (2011) as Abby Flynn/Abby Grossman
- The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) as Teresa Petrillo Belfort
- How I Met Your Mother (2013-14) as Tracy McConnell / The Mother
- Fargo (2015) as Betsy Solverson
- The Mindy Project (2015–16) as Whitney
- Black Mirror (2017) as Nanette Cole
- Modern Love (2019) as Maggie Mitchell
- Palm Springs (2020) as Sarah
- Made For Love (2021-22) as Hazel Green
- The Resort: (2022) as Emma
Tropes associated with her roles:
- Brainy Brunette: She often plays roles that are extremely intelligent and driven. Tracy Mosbey was a successsful economist who was as much of a nerd as Ted. Nanette Cole was smart enough to break a security system created by the designer of the system. Sarah was smart enough to figure out how to escape a time loop and corrected a physicist about a detail of his own work.
- Delicate and Sickly: She's played the terminally ill sweetheart in at least two of her television appearances to date. Once in Fargo as Betsy Solverson, who was Doomed by Canon to begin with, and once as Tracy McConnell in How I Met Your Mother, who's diagnosed with a vague disease and dies offscreen shortly after.
- Endearingly Dorky: When she's not a down-to-earth Nice Girl (Fargo), she'll have moments of adorable geeking out, like to a legendary coder in Black Mirror. It also plays seamlessly into her match with Ted Mosby.
- The Heart: Cristin is most often type-casted into rolls of her kind-hearted character. She's easily the most kindhearted character over the entirety of How I Met Your Mother, and she plays the Happily Married wife of the Big Good in Fargo's world of blood and chaos.
- Puppy-Dog Eyes: She has big dark eyes and she can easily pull off this trope in her roles. On Conan, she recalls a time where she was mistaken for drunk and failed every sobriety test she was given, including the pupil test.Cristin: There's a pupil test they give you, but my pupils in their resting state look like someone's who's twice over the legal limit.
