Her early film work included roles in Room Service with the Marx Brothers and Frank Capra's You Can't Take It with You, both released in 1938.

[5] She was the only child of mother Clara Emma (née Birdwell) and father John Alfred Collier, a criminal lawyer who represented the Barrow gang, Machine Gun Kelly, and Baby Face Nelson.

Miller appeared in small roles in films like Anne of Green Gables (1934), The Good Fairy (1935), and The Devil on Horseback (1936).

When RKO discovered her true age later, Miller's father provided a fake birth certificate with the name Lucy Ann Collier.

In 1938 and 1939, Miller was a supporting actress in many of the studio's films, such as Radio City Revels, Having Wonderful Time, Room Service, Tarnished Angel, and most notably as the quirky Essie Carmichael in Frank Capra's You Can't Take It With You (made at Columbia).

[14] In later life, Miller claimed to have invented pantyhose in the 1940s as a solution to the continual problem of torn stockings during the filming of dance-production numbers.

Miller followed it with Go West, Young Lady (1941), True to the Army (1942), Priorities on Parade (1942), Reveille with Beverly (1943), What's Buzzin', Cousin?

(1943), Hey, Rookie (1943), Sailor's Holiday (1944), Jam Session (1944), Carolina Blues (1945), Eadie Was a Lady (1945), and Eve Knew Her Apples (1945), a musical remake of It Happened One Night.

During her tenure at MGM, Miller usually appeared as the secondary female lead in musical films such as The Kissing Bandit (1948), On the Town (1949), Watch the Birdie with Red Skelton, Texas Carnival (1951) with Esther Williams, Two Tickets to Broadway (1951), Lovely to Look At (1952), Small Town Girl (1953), Kiss Me Kate (1953), Deep in My Heart (1954), Hit the Deck (1955), and The Opposite Sex (1956).

As the studio system and musical films began to fade in the late 1950s, Miller turned her attention to theater and television appearances.

She became known later for her distinctive appearance, which reflected a studio-era ideal of glamour - large, black, bouffant hair, heavy makeup with a splash of crimson lipstick, and fashions that emphasized her figure and long legs.

In 1979, she appeared in the Broadway show Sugar Babies with fellow MGM veteran Mickey Rooney, for which she was nominated for a Tony Award.

In 1983, she won the Sarah Siddons Award for her work in Chicago theatre,[18] On May 1, 1989, at the age of 66, Miller sang and tap-danced to "42nd Street" at the opening of the Disney MGM Studios, her last live dance performance.

[citation needed] Miller appeared in a special 1982 episode of The Love Boat, joined by fellow showbiz legends Ethel Merman, Carol Channing, Della Reese, Van Johnson, and Cab Calloway in a storyline that cast them as older relatives of the show's regular characters.

[citation needed] Miller's last stage performance was a 1998 Paper Mill Playhouse production of Stephen Sondheim's Follies, in which she played hard-boiled Carlotta Campion and received rave reviews for her rendition of the song "I'm Still Here".

Between 1995 and 2001, Molly Shannon parodied Miller several times on Saturday Night Live in a recurring sketch titled "Leg-Up!

[28] To honor Miller's contribution to dance, the Smithsonian Institution displays her favorite pair of tap shoes, which she playfully nicknamed "Moe and Joe".