Meghan, Duchess of Sussex

## Meghan

*Duchess of Sussex*

Variety*, 2022*

## Media

Official Biography

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**Meghan, Duchess of Sussex** (born Rachel Meghan Markle; August 4, 1981) is an American former actress and member of the British Royal Family. She is married to Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, the younger son of King Charles III.

Meghan was born and raised in Los Angeles, California, United States, and she began pursuing her acting career while a student at Northwestern University. She is best known for her role as Rachel Zane in the legal drama *Suits*, a character she played for seven seasons from 2011 until 2018. During that time, Meghan also developed a social media presence which included her lifestyle blog The Tig, and Meghan also became involved in charity work mainly involving women’s issues and social justice. In 2011, Meghan married American film producer Trevor Engleson after years of dating, and they remained married until their divorce in 2014.

Meghan married Prince Harry in 2018, becoming known as The Duchess of Sussex and subsequently retiring from acting. The couple have two children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet. After a year and a half of marriage, in January 2020, the couple subsequently stepped down as working members of the Royal Family and eventually settled in California in the summer of the same year.

In October 2020, they launched Archewell Inc., an American organization that focuses on non-profit activities and creative media ventures.

## Early Life and Education

Rachel Meghan Markle was born on August 4, 1981, at West Park Hospital in Canoga Park, Los Angeles, California to Doria Ragland (b. 1956), a make-up artist, and Thomas Markle Sr. (b. 1944), an Emmy Award winning television lighting director and director of photography. Meghan has two paternal half siblings, Samantha (b. 1964) and Thomas Jr (b. 1966), from her father’s first marriage to Roslyn (née Loveless).

Meghan identifies as a mixed raced woman of color. Of her heritage, Meghan has said "My dad is Caucasian and my mom is African American. I'm half black and half white." Her parents separated when she was two, and ultimately divorced when she was six. Since  her father was a Director of photography and lighting for Married…With Children, Meghan often visited the set as a child, even making an uncredited appearance as a student in the season 9 episode “The Undergraduate”.

While growing up in View Park-Windsor Hills in Los Angeles, Meghan attended Hollywood Little Red Schoolhouse. When she was 11, Meghan and her classmates wrote to Procter & Gamble to gender neutralized a dish washing soap commercial on national television. This project was featured on Nickelodeon.

Although she was raised Protestant, Meghan attended Immaculate Heart High School, which is an all-girl Catholic school. While in high school, Meghan participated in school plays and musicals. In her teenage years, Meghan worked at Humphrey Yogart, a local yogurt shop in the mid ‘90s as well as volunteered at a soup kitchen in Skid Row.

Meghan graduated high school in 1999, after which she attended Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois where she was a member of the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority. Along with her sorority sisters, Meghan volunteered with the Glass Slipper Project. After her junior year, Meghan took an internship as a junior press officer at the American Embassy in Buenos Aires. Meghan considered a career in politics, but she did not score high enough in the Foreign Service Officer test to proceed further with the US State Department, and she returned to Northwestern University, and completed a study abroad program in Madrid. In 2003, Meghan graduated from Northwestern University’s School of Communication with a bachelors degree in theater and international studies.

## Acting Career

According to Meghan herself, she had difficulty getting roles early in her career due to being “ethnically, ambiguous“ stating that she “wasn’t black enough for black roles and not white enough for white ones”. In between acting jobs, Meghan worked as a freelance calligrapher, and taught bookbinding. Her first on screen, acting appearance, was as Jill, a nurse, in two episodes of the long running daytime soap opera General Hospital. Meghan subsequently had small roles for the television shows, Century City (2004), The War at Home (2006), and CSI: NY (2006). Meghan also did several contract acting and modeling jobs. Between 2006 and 2007, she worked as a briefcase girl on 34 episodes of the US version of a game show Deal of No Deal. She also appeared in Fox’s series Fringe, as Junior agent, Amy, Jessup in the first two episodes of its second season.

In 2010, Meghan had small rolls in the films, Get Him to the Greek and Remember Me that were produced by her, then boyfriend, Trevor Engelson, as well as the film The Candidate. In 2011, Meghan appeared in the film Horrible Bosses. She was paid six figures for her roles in Remember and The Candidate.

In the summer of 2011, Meghan was cast as Rachel Zane, a paralegal turned attorney, in the legal drama Suits, and stayed on the show for seven seasons. While on Suits, Meghan lived in Toronto, Canada for nine months out of the year. Fortune Magazine estimated that she was paid $50,000 per episode, making her annual salary $450,000.

## Personal Life

### First Marriage and other relationships

Meghan began dating American film producer, Trevor Engelson, in 2004. After seven years of dating, the couple got married in Ocho Rios, Jamaica on August 16, 2011. In July 2013, after nearly 2 years of marriage, the a couple separated, and their divorce was finalized in February 2014, citing irreconcilable differences.

Shortly after her divorce, Meghan started dating Canadian celebrity chef and restaurant tour Corey Vitello. The relationship ended in May 2016 after nearly two years.

### Second Marriage and motherhood

Shortly after breaking up with Corey, Meghan was introduced to Prince Harry, a grandson of Queen Elizabeth II and the younger son of Charles, Prince of Wales, the heir apparent to the British throne.

Their relationship was made public in November 2016, after which, Prince Harry directed his communication secretary to release a statement on his behalf, to expressed his concern about the pejorative in false comments, made about his girlfriend by mainstream media and Internet trolls. After that, Meghan’s representatives complained about harassment from journalists to a British media regulator. The couple made their first public appearance together in September 2017 in Toronto at the Invictus Games of which Harry is a founding patron.

On November 27, 2017, Clarence House announced that Meghan and Harry were engaged. The announcement was met with enthusiasm, and generally positive comments about a mixed race person marrying into the royal family, especially in regards to the Commonwealth rounds. Megan subsequently announce that she would retire from acting, and that she intended to become a British citizen although the latter never came to pass.

In preparation for the wedding, the archbishop of Canterbury, Justin will be, baptize Megan, and confirmed her in the church of England on March 6, 2018. The private ceremony was performed with water from the river Jordan and took place at the chapel, Royal at St. James’s Palace. Three days before their wedding, on May 16, 2018, Meghan and Harry had a private exchange of vows with the Archbishop present in a couple of garden. Three days later on May 19, the couple were married at Saint George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle.

After the wedding, now The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, the couple lived at Nottingham Cottage on the grounds of Kensington Palace in London, England. That same year it was reported that they had signed a two-year lease on Westfield Large located on the Great Tew Estate in Cotswolds. Tey gave up the lease shortly there after when the photos of the house and its interior were published by a paparazzi agency. Meghan and Harry briefly considered moving into the 21 bedroom apartment one on the grounds of Kensington Palace, but decided to move to Frogmore Cottage on the grounds of Windsor Castle instead. The couple also move their office to Buckingham Palace. The Crown estate paid for the refurbishment’s to the cottage, which cost £2.4 million. On 6 May 2019, Meghan gave birth to their son, Archie Harrison, at Portland hospital in London.

When the Sussexes step down from the roles as working Royals, their office was closed on 31 March 2020. From November 2019 until February 2020, the family Briefly stayed at a borrowed estate in Vancouver Island, Canada. In February 2020, The Sussex family moved to Los Angeles, California, where they lived at the estate of actor Tyler Perry. In June of the same year, they moved into their own house, located on the former state of Riven Rock, Montecito in Santa Barbara, California, which is where they currently reside. In July, Meghan suffered a miscarriage. On June 4, 2021, Meghan gave birth to the couple’s daughter, Lilibet Diana, at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital.

The Sussexes own a Labrador named Pula, and two Beagles; Guy and Mamma Mia.

### Political Views

Meghan has been politically outspoken since she was 9, when her and her friends campaigned against the Gulf War.

Many years later, Meghan had supported Hillary Clinton during the 2016, United States, presidential election, and publicly condemned her opponent, Donald Trump. That same year, Meghan expressed her disappointment, when the referendum of the United Kingdom‘s membership of the European Union resulted in favor of Brexit.

After returning to the United States in 2020, Meghan and Harry released a video encouraging people to register to vote. The following year, she penned an open letter to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and she has also spoken in support of federal voting protections.

In 2022, Meghan voiced support for Ketanji Brown Jackson for the Supreme Court nomination, and she supported Moms Demand Action which is an organization which campaigns for safer gun laws in the U.S. Meghan also did an interview with Jessica Yellin Vogue where she criticized the Supreme Court’s decision that abortion is not a protected constitutional, right and she voiced her support for the proposed equal rights amendment.