Miriam Battista (July 14, 1912 – December 22, 1980) was an American actress known principally for her early career as a child star in silent films.

[1] She began performing in 1916 at the age of four in A Kiss for Cinderella, a Broadway play starring Maude Adams, in which Battista had an uncredited role as the youngest of a group of war orphans.

She had an uncredited role in the Virginia Pearson vamp vehicle Blazing Love (1916),[4] which resulted in Battista being featured, with a photo and brief biography, in an article entitled "Little Stars" in the film magazine Moving Picture Stories.

[2] Author Elinor Glyn was so impressed by Battista's performance that she wrote an ultimately unproduced screenplay for this child star whom she called "the greatest actress of the screen.

In 1931, Battista took leading roles in several Italian-language films made in New York, including Santa Lucia Luntana and Così è la vita.

with Bert Lahr, a part playing opposite Humphrey Bogart in Our Wife, and she enjoyed an unusually long run in the comedy No More Ladies.

[18] Miriam Battista returned to her native New York City, where she died at Jewish Memorial Hospital in Manhattan from complications of emphysema on December 22, 1980, aged 68.