The life of a struggling actor or actress is well documented through the accounts of some of the biggest names in the business who had to work side jobs while trying to land gigs that would ultimately propel them to stardom.
Well, the now Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle seems to have followed that same path of the starving artist. In 2018, author Andrew Morton published a book titled ‘Meghan: A Hollywood Princess’ which chronicled her life from her early acting days to her rise to royalty.
In the book, Morton claimed that Markle was so broke before she got bigger acting gigs that she couldn’t even afford to have the door on her car replaced, resulting in her having to climb through the trunk in order to gain access to the vehicle.
It was apparently so embarrassing for the actress that she would try and park away as far as possible to avoid people from seeing her. Additionally, she would act as though she was looking for something in her trunk before climbing through.
“It was a scratchy hand-to-mouth existence, one experienced by thousands of Hollywood hopefuls,” Morton wrote, also citing Markle was lucky to be in good shape or it’s entirely possible she wouldn’t have been able to climb through.
This has similar trajectory to the abdication. Tight circle knew what was going on but news burst on to an unsuspecting public when abdication was a done deal. #Edward V111 hated what he called princing too. #meghanmarkle #princeharry #abdication https://t.co/nlydO1kGlQ
— Andrew Morton (@andrewmortonUK) January 10, 2020
According to Morton, when Markle first started out acting, she was struggling to find consistent work and would only have offered here and there, nothing major, though.
To supplement her income during this daunting time in her life, she worked at a Beverly Hills restaurant and even taught gift-wrapping lessons and calligraphy classes. Tough times, indeed.
But her luck was starting to change when her now estranged-father, Thomas Markle, got her a role acting in General Hospital. Thomas was working on the show as the lighting director and vouched for his daughter. Suffice it to say, it worked.
From that watershed moment, Markle’s life was completely transformed, as it led her to land a role on the hit show, Suits, where she was graciously paid a salary of $40,000 per episode. Since then, her net worth was estimated to be approximately four million dollars, that is, until she married Prince Harry.
The royal fortune of the family significantly raised the couple’s total net worth to be about $40 million. That all is subject to dramatic change, though, as the two are on the verge of signing major endorsement deals that have been rumored to be above $100 million just for this year alone.
Meghan Markle is making her #Suits return in a cheeky way you would never expect! 😮 pic.twitter.com/8lOxWoaK3T
— Access (@accessonline) August 16, 2019
It’s crazy to think that Markle might have never gotten into acting, though, despite growing up on sets with her father.
Meghan attended Northwestern University where she studied communications and theatre. And while she grew up in Los Angeles, she initially wanted a life outside of that. This led her to even pursue a possible career in politics and an internship in Argentina at the U.S. Embassy.
Well, that didn’t work out for her and she moved back to LA. And we know how the rest of the story turned out.