Colleen Ballinger

Colleen Ballinger was an Internet personality and actress who was primarily known for portraying the character Miranda Sings on her widely watched YouTube channel. Born and raised in the coastal city of Santa Barbara, California, Ballinger dreamed of becoming a professional singer when she was a young girl. She started taking voice lessons in her early teens and majored in the arts at Azusa Pacific University. After graduating from the university in 2008, Ballinger started performing live all throughout Los Angeles. With her career on the rise, she moved to New York City, where she hoped to land a manager, and possibly a recording deal. It was also around this time that Ballinger invented the character Miranda Sings, a socially awkward woman with a bad singing voice, as a means to make videos for YouTube. Although not a hit at first, Ballinger's Miranda videos slowly gained a following, and after two years of struggling in New York City, she moved back home to the West Coast to focus on her burgeoning YouTube career. Before long Ballinger's Miranda videos were being seen by millions, making her one of the most watched personalities on YouTube. She performed the character on Jerry Seinfeld's "Comedian In Cars Getting Coffee" (Crackle, 2012- ), as well as "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon" (NBC, 2014- ), and also performed a one-woman show as Miranda before sold out crowds all across the country. With millions of subscribers to her YouTube channel and an ever-growing fanbase, Ballinger branched out to the world of streaming television in 2016 when she premiered he own Netflix series called "Haters Back Off." The series, which is a comedy based on her Miranda Sings character, debuted on Netflix in October of 2016.