April 3: Actress & singer, “Cobie" Smulders – Robin on “How I Met Your Mother” – is 31-years-old today.

-----

Jacoba Francisca Maria "Cobie" Smulders was born April 3, 1982 in Vancouver, British Columbia. She was named after her great-aunt, Jacoba, which became her nickname "Cobie."

Smulders worked in modelling, which she later said she "kind of hated,” adding that the experience made her hesitant about pursuing acting as a career.

Smulders' first role was as a guest in the Showtime science fiction series Jeremiah, and she has appeared in several television series since, including a recurring part in The L Word.

On the New York stage, she has performed in Love, Loss, and What I Wore in June 2010. Her first permanent series role was in the short-lived ABC series Veritas: The Quest, and her second was television reporter Robin Scherbatsky on the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother; an American sitcom that premiered on CBS on September 19, 2005. The 2013–14 season will be the show's ninth and final season.

The series follows the main character, Ted Mosby, and his group of friends in Manhattan. As a framing device, Ted, in the year 2030, recounts to his son and daughter the events that led to his meeting their mother. 

Robin Scherbatsky, is a news anchor and Ted's ex-girlfriend. Robin emigrated from Canada to take a job in a news station and met Ted at MacLaren's, setting him on his journey to find "The One.” Though her relationship with Ted did not work out, they continue to remain close friends. Her Canadian background is a source of many jokes. She also smokes cigars and drinks scotch. 

In season two it is revealed that, as a teenager, she was a pop star under the stage name Robin Sparkles and had a hit song named "Let's Go to the Mall.” Later she went grunge under the name Robin Daggers.

After what series creators Carter Bays and Craig Thomas described as "a pretty famous actress" turned down the role of Robin, they cast Cobie Smulders, also an unknown. Bays and Thomas later said, "Thank God we did for a million reasons... when Ted’s seeing her for the first time, America’s seeing her for the first time — the intrigue of that propelled the show going forward and kept the show alive.”

Producer and screenwriter, Joss Whedon has suggested that he considered Cobie for the role of Wonder Woman in his draft of the (cancelled) eponymous film. Smulders played Maria Hill in Whedon's 2012 film The Avengers and will reprise the role in the Russo brothers' 2014 film Captain America: The Winter Soldier with the possibility of also reprising the role in the upcoming Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. series.

####