Miramova was born in 1901 in Tsaritsyn, Russian Empire (currently, Volgograd, Russia), and emigrated to New York City with a brother who died when she was eleven years old.
[4][7] While at the Cornish School she met the Russian singer and director, Vladimir Rosing, who had come there to teach a four-week master class.
[9] Later that year, she appeared for three weeks in the play Grand Hotel at the Adelphi Theatre, after the lead Eugenie Leontovich fell ill and left the production for a short rest.
[10] Despite Miramova's brief time in the role, she was spotlighted as "outstanding in a cast of clever players," and her portrayal of the Russian ballerina Grusinskaya was hailed as "a thing of sheer beauty.
[12] Returning to New York after her husband died, she found that her strong Russian accent typecast her as a "Continental actress" in the American theatre and limited the roles she was offered; her fortunes took a downward turn, and she recalled during a later interview how she had been barred from a hotel room for non-payment while rehearsing a show.
[20] Frustrated with her career difficulties and pondering the quirks of the Russian character, Miramova decided in 1940 to write her own play, with custom-tailored roles for herself and two of her fellow Russian-American actresses.
[3] In collaboration with Eugenie Leontovich, her long-time friend with whom she had shared Grand Hotel's starring role in 1931, she wrote the comedy Dark Eyes and submitted the script to producer Ben Hecht for an opinion.
During the year that Miramova spent in Iceland, she was a regular visitor to the house of Halldór Laxness, who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1955.