Colleen Ballinger, American comedian, actress, and singer
Colleen Mae Ballinger (born November 21, 1986) is an American comedian, YouTuber, actor, singer and writer. She is best known for her Internet character Miranda Sings, posting videos of the character on YouTube, performing her one-woman comedy act on tour in theatres worldwide, and creating and starring in a Netflix original series titled Haters Back Off (2016–2017) about the character and her backstory. Ballinger created the comically talentless, egotistical and eccentric character to satirize the many YouTube videos featuring people singing badly in hopes of breaking into show business, but who appear unaware of their lack of talent. In her videos and stage act, the narcissistic character sings and dances badly, discusses current events that she misunderstands, gives inept "tutorials", collaborates with other YouTubers and rants about her critics, whom she calls the "haters".
Ballinger also features comedy and lifestyle videos on her personal YouTube channel and a vlog channel, Colleen Vlogs. Her YouTube channels, combined, have surpassed 4 billion total views. The Miranda Sings channel has more than 10 million subscribers, and the character has more than 10 million TikTok followers and 6 million Instagram followers. Ballinger won a Teen Choice Award for "Web Star: Comedy" and a Streamy Award as Best Actress. The Hollywood Reporter selected her as one of its Top 25 Digital Stars, and she was ranked No. 5 on Forbes magazine's 2017 list of top entertainment influencers.
Ballinger has appeared as an actress and singer in theatre, television, recordings and web series. She appeared in the web series Escape the Night (2018–2019), played Dawn in the Broadway musical Waitress (2019), guest-starred as Miranda Sings on Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee with Jerry Seinfeld (2014), and has appeared three times on The Tonight Show (2016–2017), among other talk shows. Ballinger has also published two best-selling books, written in Miranda's voice, Selp-Helf (2015) and My Diarrhe (2018). She is married to actor Erik Stocklin.