Meghan might have hoped that she would be ‘discovered’ the way Lana Turner or one of the Hollywood Heyday movie queens had been, but being a child of Hollywood, she was intelligent enough to realise that this was unlikely. She did not have the natural assets. Although she would later attribute her lack of early success to not being black or white enough, the fact is, her physiognomy not her race was the issue. Tyra Banks and Vanessa Williams had not found their colour a problem, but then, both women were spectacularly beautiful. Although appealing, Meghan was simply not quite so beautiful, sexy, striking, or memorable to jump out at observers the way Banks and Williams did. She did not have a breathtaking enough figure for screen stardom. Her frame was better suited to modelling, except that she was not tall enough to have a successful career as a model. Although she loved the camera, and already knew what to do with it to maximise herself, it simply didn’t love her enough for her to become another Marilyn Monroe, Gina Lollobrigida, or Sophia Loren. Great female stars were either stunningly beautiful or outstanding talents like Meryl Streep, while Meghan, for all her hopes, ambition, and attributes, was neither.
What Meghan had in spades was ambition, but it was an ambitiousness way beyond her discernible attributes, meaning that any success she achieved would be down to her character more than anything else. This could have been a very dispiriting period for her as she went from audition to audition, go-see to go-see, without being chosen. According to people who knew her then, Meghan refused to give up, no matter how dejected she became at times. She firmly believed that she was special, that she was better than others perceived her to be, that she was so bright and resourceful that she would able to convert any opportunity into something more major once she got her foot through the door. All she needed was a break, any break, even a small break. Once she got that, she’d find a way of making her way into occupying the central position she wanted for herself.
Although at first it looked to observers as if Meghan might not succeed, as if she might be riding for a fall, she was intelligent and determined enough to appreciate what many others did not. Success in the public eye is not only about natural assets. It’s also about perception and public relations. It’s about what you surround yourself with. You don’t have to be a great beauty to be acknowledged as beautiful. All you have to be is astute enough to maximise your assets: stylish enough, photographed enough, praised enough, for the general public to associate you with beauty. Diana, Princess of Wales was a case in point. A reasonably good looking woman with a nose too large, a mouth too small, cheekbones too flat, but good eyes, good colouring, good clothing, good hairstyle, and sufficient exposure for familiarity to breed acceptance of the illusion as reality, a stylish and attractive woman was accepted as the beauty she was through repetition and expert packaging.
All creatures of Hollywood know about Warren Beatty Odds. They apply as much to success on screen as to actors working their way through their address book until they hit upon the girl who will say yes to a last minute date. Rejection is meaningless as long as you accept that sooner or later, success will come your way. This was Meghan’s attitude, and she deliberately chose to be happy irrespective of how long it took for her to achieve the success she wanted. What she did not reckon upon was that all that suppressed misery would have effects down the line.
Meghan’s first real break came about through her connections, not through her own efforts, and there is every possibility she would not have even got a reading had she not been put up for it by her good friend from Northwestern, Lindsay Roth, who had a casting job on an Anton Kutcher romantic comedy called A Lot Like Love. She pitched Meghan for a one word role, which she got, though not before Meghan informed Nigel Cole, the director, that she had read the script and thought she’d be better suited for a larger role. Although she did not get the role she sought, she did get the one which Lindsay Roth had suggested, and even managed to get it expanded so that she ended up having five times as much to say as before. This did not lead, as Meghan hoped, to further success, nor did her attempt to up the ante affect her relationship with Roth, to whom she remains close, but it was the beginning of her acquiring a reputation for ballsiness amongst those who liked her, and bumptiousness amongst those who did not.
Her next role was in the sci-fi legal drama Century City, starring Ioann Gruffudd, Viola Davis and Nestor Carbonell. So poor were its ratings that only four of the nine episodes filmed were aired. Meghan, playing a party girl, delivered her one line in so hyper-animated a manner that she might well have been Richard Burton overplaying his early film roles until Elizabeth Taylor taught him to tone things down for the screen. A producer told me that her early desperation to succeed was one of the factors which prevented her from doing so. Later on, after she had become a duchess and narrated the Disney documentary Elephants Without Borders, this criticism would be echoed when her performance was slated as being over-eager to please, exaggerated, and schmaltzy. But it didn’t stop the British betting company Ladbrokes giving Meghan and the programme 20/1 odds to win the Feature Length Documentary category at next year’s Oscars.
Desperation can be a great motivator, especially if you use it to fuel your perseverance. Meghan was ambitious enough to try out different tactics under
