Megan Marie Ward was Born on September 24, 1969 in Los Angeles, California, and raised primarily in Honolulu, Hawaii. Megan was the youngest of four children, which includes two brothers and a sister.

A few years after her father, a pharmaceutical representative, accepted a position in Honolulu, he and his wife began teaching acting classes in their free time, a hobby that eventually spawned a fully-fledged school. Her parents were stage actors who performed small parts in "Magnum P.I." and "Hawaii Five-O." They met when they were both young actors, but set aside their professional theatrical ambitions once they started a family, but never gave up their love for acting. The family moved from Los Angeles to Hawaii when Megan was four years old, and her mother and father founded The Talent Development Center in Hawaii, which involved teaching drama and modelling. Megan is one of the lucky few who always knew what she wanted to be when she grew up. While her parents taught classes, she would spend hours playing with the costumes and make-up. "When I was five, I would sit between my parents while they practiced their lines, and I would tell them when they

t them wrong. Acting was always there in my life. And they would always have this baby bunny or something running on-stage - and that would be me." At the age of twelve Megan landed her first professional acting role as the part of Pease Blossom in Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at her parents Talent Development Center.

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When Megan was nine, her mother was working at a modelling agency, and that's how Megan started modelling. In the mid-1980's, Japan was a lucrative market for many Western models, and Megan had a fresh, youthful look that landed her one assignment after another. She lived in Tokyo and did really well because she had brown hair and almond eyes, so kind of looked kind of Asian, but European, and yet had an All-American smile. It was just perfect timing for Megan.

Megan was fifteen the first time she travelled to Japan, and turned nineteen during her last trip. The first two times, she was chaperoned, but by the third time, at just sixteen, she had her own apartment, and was responsible for herself. Earning more in a day than her parents did in a month, while living alone and unsupervised thousands of miles from home in a kinetic environment like Tokyo, provided ample opportunities for corruption. The one-two punch of too much money and too much free time has knocked out many young models, but Megan's parents must have done something right, because unlike some of the women she worked with, she managed to resist the temptations and make it through the high-gloss labyrinth with her mind and body intact.

Megan Ward

Contrary to the glamorous image of pencil-thin stunningly beautiful women who do nothing but wear fabulous clothes, hang out at nightclubs, and hobnob with rock stars, Megan described modelling as a gruelling, parasitic, cutthroat business, and definitely not for the weak of spirit. The allure of relatively easy money and constant pampering can make modelling difficult to quit, but after four years Megan was ready to move on. Looking back on her experience as a model today, she has mixed feelings, but doesn't miss it at all.

More than anything, she still wanted to act, so she moved to Los Angeles, where she enrolled in college for one year and began studying at the Loft Studio while continuing to make the occasional

d unsupervised thousands of miles from home in a kinetic environment like Tokyo, provided ample opportunities for corruption. The one-two punch of too much money and too much free time has knocked out many young models, but Megan's parents must have done something right, because unlike some of the women she worked with, she managed to resist the temptations and make it through the high-gloss labyrinth with her mind and body intact.

Megan Ward

Contrary to the glamorous image of pencil-thin stunningly beautiful women who do nothing but wear fabulous clothes, hang out at nightclubs, and hobnob with rock stars, Megan described modelling as a gruelling, parasitic, cutthroat business, and definitely not for the weak of spirit. The allure of relatively easy money and constant pampering can make modelling difficult to quit, but after four years Megan was ready to move on. Looking back on her experience as a model today, she has mixed feelings, but doesn't miss it at all.

More than anything, she still wanted to act, so she moved to Los Angeles, where she enrolled in college for one year and began studying at the Loft Studio while continuing to make the occasional pilgrimage to Japan to replenish the coffers. When her Japanese agency saw that she was growing disenchanted with modelling, they tempted her to stay with a Japanese-language television show and movie, but she finally realized that the projects were nothing more than enticements to keep her there and make them money, which prompted her to make a difficult and scary decision.

"Even though modelling was exciting and profitable," Megan said, "I was finally growing up, and I realized, I have to do this, I have to walk away. And that was a very, very tough time in my life, because even though I knew what I was walking away to, modelling had taken away all of my confidence, because it is just the worst profession. It's destructive. You have to be able to protect yourself in order to succeed emotionally in that environment where it's so competitive, where you're hot one day, and nothing the next."

She found herself in a paradoxical situation: she was finally committed exclusively to acting, but the insecurity fostered by modelling made her afraid to pursue it. "I had been so defeated emotionally by modelling that I was scared," Megan admitted. "I had this horror of actually putting myself on the line and auditioning, and saying, "This is who I am - do you like me or do you hate me?' Acting had always been a passion, a creative process, something competitive," she continued. "I was able to believe in the art of acting, the expression of acting, the joy of acting, and that's a very important thing to have - I think I'm lucky that way. It wasn't like a flash, which is why I hated modelling. It wasn't the flip of my hair, it wasn't how good I looked in that outfit, or how much attitude I had in the audition. It was, 'I have to be good in order to get this part. I don't have to be pretty, I have to be good.' And I was afraid I wasn't good enough, so I studied, and did plays." This lasted for almost two years until finally she began to audition.

Megan Ward

Her first acting job was a part in a commercial which never aired because the product never came out. However, because of this job she got the SAG card, which she needed. Work in commercials soon led to a string of parts in mostly forgettable low-budget films and her career path might be