Tragic Details About Miranda Cosgrove

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When you think of child actors, there is usually the assumption of a subsequent challenging life. Many of the once-famous kids on our screens have vanished. Some former child stars have even sadly ended up homeless. But for one Nickelodeon mogul, life has been fairly normal, considering their high-profile career. Miranda Cosgrove is a multihyphenate in the industry, showcasing her talents on the big screen and in the recording studio. But the actress and singer is most known for being a paramount personality during Nickelodeon's most lucrative era. Cosgrove cemented herself in TV history when she helmed the Nick hit, "iCarly," as the titular Carly Shay. She later enrolled in the University of Southern California, where she studied psychology, and eventually made her way back to the small screen with the Paramount+ "iCarly" sequel. 

Even with a considerably stable transition from child stardom to her adult career, Cosgrove hasn't been immune to road bumps. Her immense fame has made her vulnerable to scrutiny and even terrifying stalking incidents. Her music career has also put her in troubling situations, like a 2011 bus crash that permanently scarred her. She has dealt with internal demons as well, suffering from sleep paralysis that leaves her terrified. Underneath Cosgrove's affable and bubbly personality is a tragically dark past. 

Miranda Cosgrove has opened up about navigating the harsh environment of child acting. In an interview with Today, the star of "The Wrong Paris" described how the spotlight added another layer of complication to adolescence. "It's already a challenge of growing up, finding your voice and figuring out where you fit in and how to do that — I would say just growing up in the entertainment business, and also going through that at the same time, it's even more pressure," said Cosgrove. She was, however, grateful that she could pursue acting on her own terms and was never forced by her parents. That wasn't the situation for all her "iCarly" co-stars.

Jennette McCurdy, who played Sam Puckett on the hit Nickelodeon sitcom, detailed the abuse from her mother during her child acting days in her 2022 memoir, "I'm Glad My Mom Died." She also discussed the predatory behavior she was subjected to on set from a figure she dubbed "The Creator," who is widely speculated to be the "iCarly" creator, Dan Schneider. McCurdy's time working with Schneider is not unlike some of the other stories that came out about the Nickelodeon tycoon in the bombshell documentary, "Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV." Cosgrove has never directly addressed the allegations against her former boss; nonetheless, old clips of the "iCarly" set have catalyzed speculation that she was uncomfortable with the environment Schneider created.

Without going into detail about her own struggles as a child star, Cosgrove responded to the tragic confessions in McCurdy's book, offering sympathy and regret for not discussing it in their teens. "When you're young, you're so in your own head," she told The New York Times. "You can't imagine that people around you are having much harder struggles."

In addition to the pressures of adolescent stardom, Miranda Cosgrove struggled to cope with the rise of social media and the online scrutiny that accompanied being a public figure. "That's definitely one of the worst — the bad sides of the internet," the actor said on the "Reign with Josh Smith" podcast. Growing up, Cosgrove gave more weight to the negative comments about her on social media than the positive ones. "...Especially when I was younger, I would go through and kind of ignore all the nice comments and look for the one mean one," she explained, noting that even the rare detractors could hit her where it hurt.

Cosgrove's media and digital footprint has fortunately not left her with too much vitriol, she has admitted. In a 2024 interview with Bustle, the "Leave It All To Me" hitmaker spoke about her likeness to her famous Nickelodeon character. "In some ways, I haven't really completely broken out of playing [Carly]," she said. However, she got candid about the challenge of trying to separate herself from that quirky teenage persona, which hasn't been easy. "A lot of people think that that's exactly what I'm like," Cosgrove added. "Now that I'm older, I don't mind as much. But there's still a little part of me that's like, 'It'd be nice if people could see me in a different light.'"

The entertainment industry didn't bless Miranda Cosgrove with a break from all the stereotypical plights of stardom. Indeed, Cosgrove experienced terrifying stalker incidents during and after college. In 2014, the TV star requested a restraining order against Joshua Stockton, who had allegedly been trailing Cosgrove around California for months, per the Chicago Sun-Times. Stockton bombarded Cosgrove's social media accounts and even went as far as to seek her out at the University of Southern California. After Cosgrove rejected his gifts and intense admiration, he reportedly threatened to end his life. Stockton was arrested in 2015 after he violated the parameters of the restraining order while following Cosgrove around Disneyland.

In 2016, Cosgrove faced another chilling stalker situation that ended gruesomely. For days, a man had been burying knives and other items in her backyard, which Cosgrove said she failed to notice while recalling the story on a 2020 episode of Whitney Cummings' podcast "Good For You." On the night of the incident, the man purportedly waited in Cosgrove's yard for six hours before he shot at a woman driving past who looked like the actor. The woman luckily sped away unscathed, but the man ultimately set himself on fire and fatally shot himself in the head. "I just don't feel super safe in that house," she said in her interview with Bustle, noting that she still lived there as of 2024. "For two years after it happened, I wouldn't really stay there."

At the height of her career, Miranda Cosgrove garnered a viewership as an actor on "iCarly" and attracted audiences with her musical talents. But in 2011, she had to halt her tour after a bus crash left her in the hospital. While driving through Illinois in the midst of her "Dancing Crazy Summer Tour," Cosgrove's tour bus collided with a semi-truck on the highway. According to TMZ, Cosgrove claimed in the aftermath of the accident that her bus driver's quick thinking saved her from more serious, and possibly fatal, injuries. Instead of trying to swerve out of the truck's way, which could have ended in the tour bus flipping over, the driver stepped on the brakes while hitting the semi straight on — Cosgrove believes that was the safer choice.

"Thank u so much for all your messages," Cosgrove wrote on X at the time (via E! News). "They mean so much to me. Yesterday was extremely scary & I'm just so happy everyone's going to be okay." Luckily, the "School of Rock" alum left the scene of the accident with only a broken ankle and toe. However, she still has a mysterious scar on her leg that doctors still can't understand. During a 2021 appearance on the podcast "Hypochondriactor," Cosgrove said that she noticed a strange hole when medical staff took off her cast. "And then I was like, 'Wait, why is there a hole in my leg?' So [the doctors] were like, 'Oh, we didn't do that,'" she said, later adding, "but you could tell it was like somebody punctured through completely and cut a hole."

While acting and singing are her full-time jobs, Miranda Cosgrove is also an educator. Cosgrove is the host of "Mission Ustoppable," a CBS show dedicated to teaching viewers about the STEM field. In one segment, she explained the eerie sensation of sleep paralysis, a type of parasomnia that only affects roughly 8% of the global population, per the National Institute of Health. It often inhibits speech and the ability to move your arms or legs. Many experience nightmarish hallucinations of demons or intruders. Sleep paralysis, if severe enough, can cause anxiety disorders. Unfortunately for Cosgrove, she is a part of the small portion of people who experience the disorder.

"It's so scary," Cosgrove said on "The Kelly Clarkson Show" in 2023. "The best thing you can do is have a really set sleep schedule and try to really stick to it, because it usually happens when you're stressed or really tired." In a 2024 interview with Wired, Cosgrove explained how learning the science behind sleep paralysis actually helped relieve her fears. However, learning that good sleep patterns can ward off those sleep paralysis demons was a downside, as Cosgrove noted she doesn't have a very good sleep schedule. She mused, "So I'm probably still gonna have sleep paralysis my whole life."