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The US actress – who announced her engagement to Prince Harry on November 27 – revealed she suffered hundreds of failed auditions during a decade-long battle to get regular TV work.
In an open letter, written by the 36-year-old to Darling Magazine in 2015, she spoke of her struggle as she tried to land a job in the business.
She wrote: “I was trying to find my value in an industry that judges you on everything that you’re not versus everything that you are.
Meghan Markle's engagement ring REVEALED
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“Not thin enough, not pretty enough, not ethnic enough, while also being too thin, too ethnic, too pretty the very next day.”
But her “wake-up call” came at an audition with casting director April Webster who has hired actors for box-office hits including Star Wars and Mission Impossible.
Meghan added: “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’.
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Prince Harry joins former flame Cressida Bonas at charity concert
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“Not thin enough, not pretty enough, not ethnic enough”
Meghan Markle
“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.”
The future royal moved to Los Angeles as a teenager in a bid to make it as an actor.
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Meghan was 18 when she danced around like a “wild” woman for an audition to star in a Shakira music video.
The candid footage shows the star sharing her hopes and dreams with ex-best pal Ninaki Priddy as they drove around the American state during the summer of 1999.
Though she didn’t land that job, she did appear in Tori Amos’ hit Oceans in 2000.