Background and career
Cristin Milioti (born August 16, 1985) is an American actress and musician. Known for her roles on stage and screen, she has received various accolades including a Grammy Award and a Primetime Emmy Award, as well as nominations for an Actor Award and a Tony Award. Milioti started her career with supporting roles on television, including as Catherine Sacrimoni in the HBO drama series The Sopranos (2006–2007). She rose to prominence for her performance as Tracy McConnell in the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother (2013–2014). She earned critical acclaim for her portrayal of Sofia Falcone in the HBO crime drama series The Penguin (2024), for which she earned the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie. Milioti appeared in the Fox sitcom The Mindy Project (2015–2016), the second season of the FX anthology crime series Fargo (2015), the Netflix science fiction series Black Mirror (2017, 2025), the HBO Max comedy series Made for Love (2021–2022), and the Peacock comedy mystery series The Resort (2022). She also starred in films such as The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), It Had to Be You (2015), Palm Springs (2020), and Buddy (2026). On stage, she acted on Broadway in the plays The Lieutenant of Inishmore (2006) and Coram Boy (2007) before starring in the musical Once (2011–2013), which earned her a Grammy Award as well as a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical.
Milioti was born on August 16, 1985, in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, a suburb of Philadelphia. She is of Italian descent, and calls her family "Olive Garden Italian". In middle school, she found her love of acting at Long Lake Camp for the Arts in Long Lake, New York. She graduated in 2003 from Cherry Hill High School East, where she began performing in school plays. She took acting-classes at New York University, but dropped out during her sophomore year, admitting that her dropping out was a result of her being "wildly unhappy there".
Milioti's first acting roles were bit parts in national advertising campaign ads, notably one for the Ford Edge. She appeared in television programs such as The Sopranos and films such as Greetings from the Shore. Milioti appeared in stage performances. In 2007, she appeared on Broadway as Alice Ashbrook in Helen Edmundson's award-winning adaptation of Jamila Gavin's novel Coram Boy. In 2010, she starred in That Face, and was nominated for the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Play for her work in Stunning.
In 2012, she received a Tony Award nomination for Best Actress in a Musical for her portrayal of Girl in Once, a musical in which she performed from 2011 to 2013. Of her performance, Ben Brantley of the New York Times wrote: "It's not easy playing a winsome life force with a foreign accent. But Ms. Milioti has mastered the assignment brilliantly. She brings a new confidence to her portrayal, and an enhanced mixture of wit and wisdom, which suggests a maturity in youth, a fatalism hard won during an Eastern European childhood. And together she and Mr. Kazee exude a chemistry that is all the more achingly real for being so subdued." Her Once performance, with fellow principal soloist Steve Kazee, earned the 2013 Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album. She also read aloud a short story for the 2011 This American Life episode "Adventure". In 2012, she appeared on several songs of Glen Hansard's debut album Rhythm and Repose.
In 2013, Milioti was cast in the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother as the titular Mother, appearing for the first time in the season eight finale titled "Something New", and was promoted to a series regular for the show's ninth and final season. Milioti portrayed Jordan Belfort's first wife, Teresa Petrillo, in the 2013 Martin Scorsese film The Wolf of Wall Street. In February 2014, she was cast as Zelda, the female lead on NBC's comedy A to Z which premiered that October and aired for one season of 13 episodes. In 2015, she co-starred on the second season of FX's Fargo as Betsy Solverson, the cancer-stricken wife of state trooper Lou Solverson and mother of future deputy Molly Solverson. In 2017, Milioti appeared in the fourth season of the sci-fi anthology show Black Mirror in the episode "USS Callister" as Nanette Cole, a newly employed game developer whose digital recreation becomes trapped in a virtual simulator game, a role she reprised in the 2025 seventh season episode "USS Callister: Into Infinity".
In 2020, Milioti starred in the sci-fi/comedy Palm Springs, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January and on Hulu in July. In 2021, she starred in the HBO Max dark comedy series Made for Love as the entrapped wife of a tech billionaire from whom she runs away. In 2024, Milioti starred as Sofia Falcone in the HBO spin-off miniseries of The Batman titled The Penguin, opposite Colin Farrell. For her performance, she won the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Actress in a Movie/Miniseries and Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie.
