Meghan Markle
Meghan Markle, actress-turned-Duchess-turned-Netflix-mogul, is one of the most searched, most polarising women on the planet, and she shows zero sign of fading from the headlines.
Rachel Meghan Markle was born on 4 August 1981 in Los Angeles, California. She built a solid Hollywood career as Rachel Zane on the legal drama Suits (2011–2018) before her relationship with Prince Harry catapulted her onto the world stage. In May 2018 she married Harry, became the Duchess of Sussex, and instantly became one of the most photographed women alive.
Her time as a working royal was brief and combustible. After a series of widely reported tensions with the British press and, by their own account, with the wider Royal Family, Meghan and Harry announced in January 2020 that they were stepping back from senior royal duties, an event the tabloids immediately branded “Megxit.” The couple relocated to Montecito, California, and have since built an independent media and business presence.
Since leaving royal life, Meghan has co-produced and starred in content for Netflix, launched and then paused her lifestyle brand American Riviera Orchard, and released her own podcast Archetypes on Spotify (the deal ended in 2023). She and Harry gave a headline-grabbing interview to Oprah Winfrey in March 2021 and later co-produced a Netflix docuseries, Harry & Meghan (2022).
The public’s fascination with Meghan is a perfect storm of royalty, race, celebrity, and media criticism. She is simultaneously defended as a trailblazer who exposed institutional racism in the British establishment and attacked as a self-promoting opportunist, often by people working from the same set of facts. That tension keeps her name at the top of search charts years after she left The Firm.