Long before she was saving the world with Nick Fury or helping Ted meet the mother of his kids, Cobie Smulders was just another talented Vancouver kid attending Lord Byng High School (and hanging out at the mall, probably).
As Robin Scherbatsky, the Canadian-born news anchor on the hit sitcom How I Met Your Mother, Smulders was the embodiment of Canuck stereotypes: She loved Neil Young, Scotch, donuts, apologizing, and the metric system, and she had a secret past as a teen pop star. As Scherbatsky defended herself against her friends’ mockery of Canadian Thanksgiving and the colour of our money, Smulders secured her place as one of Canada’s favourite (with a ‘u’!) avengers.
Born Jacoba Francisca Maria Smulders, in Vancouver in 1982, Smulders worked as a model before diving into acting full-time. Her early roles were on locally shot series, including Jeremiah and The L-Word. Besides her fan-favourite role on How I Met Your Mother, she is world-famous for her work as the ass-kicking, gun-wielding Maria Hill in multiple Marvel properties, including The Avengers, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Captain America: Winter Soldier, and Avengers: Age of Ultron. She was also the voice of Wonder Woman in 2014’s The Lego Movie, which was particularly awesome in a movie where everything is already awesome.
Smulders was recently back in the 604 to shoot a role in Netflix’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, which hit the streaming service in January. She’s also a cancer survivor and a mother of two, and is married to Taran Killam, an alumni of Mad TV and Saturday Night Live who is currently portraying King George III in Hamilton on Broadway.
