Lara Jill Miller is an American actress and voice actress, known for her role as Samantha "Sam" Kanisky on the 1980s sitcom Gimme a Break! and as Kathy on The Amanda Show. As a voice actress, she had roles in English dubs of Japanese anime such as Kari Kamiya in Digimon Adventure, Koko in Zatch Bell!, and Haru in BEASTARS. In cartoons, she voices the title characters in Clifford's Puppy Days, The Life and Times of Juniper Lee and Henry Hugglemonster and also voices Izzie in SciGirls, Widget in Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!, Allie in Curious George, Lambie in Doc McStuffins, Fink in OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes, and Lisa Loud in The Loud House.
Early life
Miller was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania. She first started acting in a dinner theater she found in a newspaper ad, and she didn't know what the word audition meant. She asked her Dad what that meant and he told her. She graduated from Allentown's William Allen High School. Her mother was a homemaker and her father a pajama factory owner.
Career
Miller's professional acting career began on Broadway, where she appeared as Amaryllis in a revival of The Music Man with Dick Van Dyke. In 1981, after her appearance on Broadway, she joined the cast of Gimme a Break!, playing the role of the tomboyish Samantha "Sam" Kanisky, opposite Nell Carter. When the series ended its six-year run on NBC in 1987, Miller returned east, to New York University, where she also played on the university's women's varsity tennis team and continued to perform on stages around the country. Four years later, she received her J.D. degree from Fordham University School of Law, leaving graduation early to portray Peter Pan in a production at the Pennsylvania Youth Theater. She subsequently was admitted to practice law in New Jersey, New York, and her native Pennsylvania. In 1999, Miller returned to Hollywood, California and resumed her on-camera acting career with recurring roles on the Nickelodeon series The Amanda Show and All That, as well as General Hospital. She also began working in animated series, lending her voice to characters such as Kari in Digimon, Koko in Zatch Bell!, Alejo in Astro Boy, one of the Tachikoma mini-tanks in , and Scheris Adjani in s-CRY-ed. Miller also provided the singing voice of Dorothy Gale in the National Public Radio adaptation of L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and the voices of the title characters on Cartoon Network's The Life and Times of Juniper Lee, Disney Junior's Henry Hugglemonster, and the PBS Kids prequel to Clifford the Big Red Dog, Clifford's Puppy Days. Miller's roles include the recurring roles of Pookie, Wiki, and Tini on Disney Channel's Higglytown Heroes, Haruka of Daigunder, and the Nick Jr. series Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! as Widget, the show's problem-solving pink creature resembling a rabbit, both PBS series Curious George as Allie and SciGirls as Izzie, and regular guest-starring roles on several other animated series. As of 2017, she is doing voice work on the Disney Channel/Disney Junior television series Doc McStuffins as the voice of Lambie, as well as the Nickelodeon television series The Loud House in which she voices Lisa Loud, Becky, Margo Roberts, and Nurse Patti. In 2020, she voice acted for 2 cartoons, the episode Tween Titans in DC Super Hero Girls and the English dub for Beastars as Haru.
Radio and podcast appearances
Miller appeared on Talkin Toons with Rob Paulsen in 2013, Ken Reid's TV Guidance Counselor podcast on March 4, 2016 and Nickelodeon Animation Podcast on September 22, 2016.
