Pippa Lee is the devoted wife of a brilliant man thirty years her senior, the proud mother of grown up twins, and an adored friend and neighbour. But where once she was content with this seemingly enviable world, Pippa now finds her life beginning to unravel. She starts to wonder, how did she find herself in this place? Born in Roxbury, Connecticut, she is the daughter of playwright Arthur Miller and Austrian photographer Inge Morath. She has a brother, Daniel, who was born in 1966 with Down Syndrome and was placed in an institution shortly after his birth. She was educated at Choate Rosemary Hall and Yale University, where she studied art. She initially pursued an acting career, landing parts in the television movie The Murder of Mary Phagan and the feature films Regarding Henry (1991) and Consenting Adults (1992).

In 1995, she went behind the camera, writing and directing her first film, Angela. The film was critically well-received, but did not garner significant attention or audiences.

Miller had markedly more success with her 2002 film Personal Velocity: Three Portraits, an adaptation of Personal Velocity, a collection of short stories she had published the previous year. The independent film won her a number of awards, including the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, and established her name as a director. She is the author of the 2003 book Woman Who... and director of the 2005 film The Ballad of Jack and Rose, starring her husband, actor Daniel Day-Lewis, whom she first met when he and her father were preparing the film version of the elder Miller's play The Crucible. Miller and Day-Lewis were married on November 13, 1996 and have two sons, Ronan (born 1998) and Cashel (born 2002).

Miller's latest film is 2009's The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, which she adapted from her novel of the same name.