Miranda Otto

Miranda Otto (born 16 December 1967) is an Australian actress.

She is the daughter of actors Barry and Lindsay Otto and the paternal half-sister of actress Gracie Otto.

Otto was born on 16 December 1967 in Brisbane and was raised there and in Newcastle.

She briefly lived in Hong Kong following her parents' divorce at age six.

She spent weekends and holidays with her father in Sydney and developed an interest in acting through him.

During her childhood, Otto and her friends wrote scripts and designed costumes and flyers in their spare time.

She appeared in several plays at the Nimrod Theatre, which attracted the attention of casting director Faith Martin.

Otto began her acting career in 1986 at age 18 and appeared in a variety of independent and major studio films in Australia.

Subsequently, Otto received a role in the 1986 World War II drama Emma's War.

She had wanted to be a ballerina but was forced to abandon this goal due to moderate scoliosis.

She made her major film debut in Emma's War in 1987 in which she played a teenager who moves to Australia's bush country during World War II.

Prior to graduation, she appeared in minor film roles including Initiation (1987) and The 13th Floor (1988).

After a decade of critically acclaimed roles in Australian films, Otto gained Hollywood's attention during the 1990s after appearing in supporting roles in the films The Thin Red Line and What Lies Beneath.

Otto graduated from the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney in 1990.

Otto's first post-graduation film role in 1991, as Nell Tiscowitz in The Girl Who Came Late, was her breakthrough role which brought her to the attention of the Australian film industry and the general public.

In the film, directed by Kathy Mueller, she starred as a young woman who could communicate with horses.

Her appearance garnered Otto her first Australian Film Institute nomination for the best actress award the following year.

Otto's next role was in The Last Days of Chez Nous (1991), which portrayed the complex relationships between the members of an Australian family.

The film earned Otto her second Australian Film Institute nomination, this time for the best supporting actress award.

In 1993, Otto co-starred with Noah Taylor in the sexually provocative comedy film The Nostradamus Kid, which was based on the memories of author Bob Ellis during the 1960s.

Otto was drawn to the film because she was "fascinated by the period and the people who came out of it".

A small role in the independent film Sex Is a Four Letter Word followed in 1995.

In 1995, she began to doubt her career choice as she failed to get the parts for which she auditioned.

She retreated to her home in Newcastle for almost a year, during which she painted her mother's house.

In 1996, director Shirley Barrett cast Otto as a shy waitress in the film Love Serenade.

She played Dimity Hurley, a lonely young woman who competes with her older sister Vicki-Ann for the attention of a famous DJ from Brisbane.

She starred in the 1997 films The Well and Doing Time for Patsy Cline.

When Otto received the film script for The Well, she refused to read it, fearing that she would not get the part.

Otto believed that she could not convincingly play the role of Katherine, who is supposed to be 18, as she was 30 at the time.

The film, directed by Samantha Lang, starred Otto as a teenager involved in a claustrophobic relationship with a lonely older woman.

The Well received mixed reviews; critic Paul Fisher wrote that Otto's performance was not "convincing" as she was "playing another repetitious character about whom little is revealed", while Louise Keller stated that Otto had delivered "her best screen performance yet."

Otto earned her third Australian Film Institute nomination for the film.

Later that year, she co-starred with Richard Roxburgh in the drama Doing Time for Patsy Cline.

The low-budget Australian film required Otto to perform country music standards and also received mixed reviews from film critics.

Soon after the release of The Well and Doing Time for Patsy Cline, magazines and other media outlets were eager to profile the actress.

In 1997, Otto began dating her Doing Time for Patsy Cline co-star Richard Roxburgh.

Her involvement with Roxburgh made her a regular subject of Australian tabloid magazines and media at the time, a role to which she was unaccustomed.

Otto's next project was the romantic comedy Dead Letter Office (1998).

The film was Otto's first with her father, Barry, who makes a brief appearance.

She rose to fame in the early 2000s for playing Éowyn in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings film series, based on the classic fantasy novel of the same name by English author J. R. R. Tolkien.