Meghan Markle is living the dream! She went from starring on a hit TV show to getting engaged to Prince Harry, but the 36-year-old previously revealed that she struggled with “soul-sucking” insecurities during her early days as an actress in Hollywood.
Markle wrote a letter for Darling magazine that they recently reprinted explaining that in her days as an up-and-coming actress, the soon-to-be royal struggled with feelings of not being good enough. “I was in my early 20s, still figuring so much out, and trying to find my value in an industry that judges you on everything that you’re not versus everything that you are. Not thin enough, not pretty enough, not ethnic enough, while also being too thin, too ethnic, too pretty the very next day.”
She also revealed she used to crawl into her old Ford Explorer Sport through the trunk since the doors wouldn’t open. “So I would drive to auditions and park at the back of the parking lot, far from the eyes of anyone who could see me unlocking the trunk and crawling into my car through its only feasible entry point,” she wrote. “I would play it off—obviously—as though I was looking for something, reaching so deep for something that my car almost sucked me in to get it—much like my experience with Hollywood, to be honest. Struggling, climbing hurdles, searching for something that I couldn’t even see—and just reaching for it,” she continued, “The analogy never struck me then—frankly, it just felt soul sucking at the time—but now it resonates in the most poignant way.”
She had a lightbulb moment while auditioning for casting director April Webster. “I had never met her before, and at my very first audition for her, she stopped me mid-scene and said so simply, ‘You need to know that you’re enough,’” Markle revealed. “It wouldn’t have mattered if I cried, because she saw me. She saw all that self-doubt beaming through the self-tanner and excessive blush. ‘You need to know that you’re enough,’ she said. ‘Less makeup, more Meghan.’ She went on to say that I was like a ‘shrinking violet,’ wilted joy and energy and exuberance behind this shroud of insecurity. You couldn’t pay for a therapy session this good. And that moment, for me, was a wake-up call.”
Markle recalled how she went on to launch The Tig, a lifestyle blog that aimed to “redefine what beauty is.” “I can write to the girl I was 10 years ago and for the woman I strive to be in another 10,” she concluded. “I want to make her proud. I want to remind her of her worth, just as that casting director did for me many moons ago.”
The Suits star shut down The Tig in April 2017, but we can’t wait to see how she continues to champion the cause in her role as fiancee!
