Meeting Cobie Smulders for the first time during our May cover shoot was funny—mostly because I felt like I knew her already. Not because I’ve grown to know her through her hilarious role on
How I Met Your Mother, but because somehow, I’ve met countless people who have gone to high school with her, modeled alongside her in Europe or even used to have Thanksgiving dinner with her. The Vancouver-born actress is literally the girl next door—and it seems I’ve met all her neighbours at some point. But frankly,
she didn’t look very girl next door during the shoot. While she joked that her “mother’s practice” was the only reason she looked radiant after a mere few hours of sleep, Smulders was effortless in everything from the
figure-hugging Stella McCartney cover look to a theatrical Paco Rabanne iridescent mesh top that wasn’t for the faint of heart. Now that she’s hitting the big screen on May 4
^th in
The Avengers, she opened up about everything from family to career.
On The Avengers “It’s coming out soon and it’s starting to feel real. I haven’t seen it though! [The studio is] very private about it. There is a part of me that wants to see the film at the premiere on the big screen for the first time because when you sign on to do a movie like that, so much of it is CGI.
You read it on the page and you can imagine what it’s going to look like. So now I’m excited.”
On How I Met Your Mother “It’s interesting to think that I’ve been alongside these people for longer than anyone I went to high school or college with. It’ll be almost a decade, which is insane. It’s like a family and I’m the middle sibling! I don’t even have to think about that. It’s a dynamic that is constantly changing, but I always find myself in the middle.”
On her parenting style “I do dress my child like a boy. I dress her in jeans and a T-shirt and she wants to put a big giant tutu over it. It’s innate because she doesn’t watch TV—just a movie a week—and it was very organic. She was just like
‘I want to wear that dress today.’” For more, check out our May issue!