Miriam Cooper was born in 1891 in Baltimore, Maryland, to Julian Cooper and Margaret Stewart, a Roman Catholic family of moderate means. Her father, Julian, abandoned his family, leaving her mother to raise their five children, including Miriam, Nelson, Gordon, and Lenore, on her own. After their grandmother's death, the family struggled financially and was forced to move from Washington Heights to Little Italy. At one point, Miriam was sent to an orphanage due to her mother's poor health.
Miriam received her education at St. Walburga's Academy, a convent school, and Coopers Union Art School. Before entering the film industry, she worked as a model for artists Harrison Fisher and Charles Dana Gibson. Her first film role was as an extra in D.W. Griffith's A Blot on the 'Scutcheon (1912). She then traveled to Florida, where she played the ingénue in nearly 30 films for Kalem studios, performing her own stunts, including horseback riding, running along train tops, and swimming a horse across a river.
Miriam's career took a significant turn when Griffith rediscovered a screen test she made for him and brought her into his circle. She had leading roles in both The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916). During this time, she fell in love with Griffith's assistant director, Raoul Walsh, and the two secretly married on the Hopi Indian Reservation in Arizona in 1916. However, their marriage became public when Walsh left Griffith for Fox Films, and Miriam joined him.
After their marriage, Miriam's interest in her film career waned, but Walsh continued to direct her in several movies, including Evangeline (1919). The couple adopted two boys, but they were unable to have biological children. Eventually, Miriam grew tired of Walsh's infidelity and divorced him in 1925. She never remarried and instead focused on her personal life, becoming an avid golfer and achieving holes-in-one in three different states.
In the 1960s, Miriam was rediscovered by film historians and college students, and she enjoyed the attention. She completed her autobiography, "Dark Lady of the Silents," in 1973, before passing away from a stroke in 1976.
