Birthplace: Cornwall Manor, England, United Kingdom
biography
Rachel Ward is perhaps best recalled as Meggie Cleary, the strong-willed heroine who carries on a lifelong love affair with a Catholic priest, in the 1983 ABC miniseries "The Thorn Birds". But the sultry former model has also starred in more than a dozen feature films and several high profile TV projects and, in the mid-1990s, has begun a secondary career as a filmmaker.This scion of an aristocratic British family left school at 16 to pursue a career as a fashion model. With her lustrous brown hair, expressive eyes and slightly exotic features (no typical English rose she), Ward was soon in
Worked as fashion model and appeared in TV commercials before entering films
1979
Acting debut in the NBC TV-movie "Christmas Lillies of the Field"
1981
Feature film acting debut, "Night School"
1981
"Discovered" by Burt Reynolds who contacted her after seeing her picture in Time magazine and suggested she read for the part of Dominoe in his film, "Sharky's Machine"
