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Melissa Suzanne George (born 6 August 1976) is an Australian actress and athlete who has worked in Australia and the United States in film and television. A beautiful Australian import who went from competitive roller-skating champion to model to actress, Melissa George was relatively unknown in the United States through the 1990s, though in her native country and the United Kingdom, she was such a superstar that her 2000 wedding in Bali was invaded by helicopters carrying tabloid photographers. Discovered at age sixteen and cast on the popular nighttime soap "Home and Away" (aired on Australia's Channel Seven), George quickly became a fan favorite through her portrayal of runaway Angel. Starring on the show from early 1993 through August 1996, Angel went from disheveled new girl in town to the center of the series, charming and lovable with just the right measure of trauma. The character's journey took her from being discovered as a teen single mother to becoming half of the series young power couple to losing her mate to having his child and finally, to being swept away by a dashing young millionaire, her happy ending exit from Summer Bay. George was born in Perth, Western Australia, the daughter of Pamela, a nurse, and Glenn George, a construction worker. The second of four children, George developed an interest in dancing and began studying jazz, tap, ballet, and modern dance at the age of seven. Her enthusiasm for dance eventually evolved into a passion for roller skating. George was an Australian national roller skating champion and won bronze medals in the National Championships in 1989 and 1990. She also won a silver medal at the Junior World Championship in 1991. Possessing an alluring fresh-faced beauty, the usually blonde George seemed to have her whole career ahead of her upon her "Home and Away" departure. She spent her initial time out of the TV series grind taking on projects in different fields, including her sleepwear line An Angel at My Bedside and her teen-aimed health and fitness video "Mind, Body & Soul". Baring her enviable shape in Australian Playboy in 1997 was a seemingly controversial move than didn't have much of a detrimental effect on her fan base, but rather kept her in the public's mind. George started modeling in her early teens and in 1992 she was named Western Australia's Teenage Model of the Year. At age sixteen she was discovered by casting agent Liz Mullinar and got the role of Angel Parrish alongside Dieter Brummer on the popular Australian soap Home and Away. George left Perth and moved to Sydney to start her acting career. After three years on the show she decided to leave to try find other acting challenges. Melissa was featured nude in Australian Playboy and also in celebrity photo magazine Black + White shortly after leaving Home and Away. A recurring role that year on the US-Australian co-production "Roar" (Fox) marked her introduction to American audiences, starring opposite fellow Aussie up and comer Heath Ledger in the medieval-set adventure. The long dark hair with blunt bangs and revealing costumes she sported for the series likened the young actress to the similarly-themed "Xena, Warrior Princess", though "Roar" failed to make the leap to a second season. The following year, George made her feature film debut with a small but pivotal role in the thriller "Dark City", her mostly unclothed role memorable to the limited audience that caught the film. She was next featured in "The Limey" (1999), co-starring with Peter Fonda as a doomed young woman whose ex-con father (Terrence Stamp) goes on a mission to avenge her death. George made a health and fitness video, Mind, Body and Soul (1996), created a sleepwear line named "An Angel at My Bedside" and had a recurring role on the short-lived television series Roar (1997), opposite Heath Ledger, before leaving Australia to move to Los Angeles to try her luck in the US. After moving to Los Angeles, she scored small roles in several films, including Dark City, The Limey, Mulholland Drive and Down with Love. She also starred in several TV pilots that were never aired on television, such as Lost in Oz. She had brief success in 2001 with the cancelled ABC drama-comedy Thieves, co-starring John Stamos. She also starred in the WB hit series Charmed for the sixth season premiere. Though a starring regular role in the proposed TV series remake of the popular "L.A. Confidential" seemed like a plum role for the actress, it turned out to be a false start, as the cancelled pilot went unaired, with viewers unable to see her take on Lynn Bracken, the role that Kim Basinger originated and for which she took home an Oscar. George proved impressed with her turn as a bank-robbing cheerleader in the teen black comedy "Sugar & Spice" in 2001, displaying both attributes with her cheekily passionate portrayal of a high-schooler obsessed with "Late Night" host Conan O'Brien. Later that year, David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive" screened to raves at Cannes. Initially conceived as a TV series, the pilot was extended into a feature film with George in a supporting role. That fall, the actress returned to US TV as regular alongside John Stamos in the sexy adventure series "Thieves" (ABC, 2001), playing the more tech-savvy of the two titular career criminals. Well-reviewed but also ratings-impaired, the series did prove to be George's official entry into the Hollywood market, but not without a few more baby steps. In 2003 she landed a pair of appearances on the hit series "Friends" (NBC) playing the too-sexy nanny to Ross and Rachel's daughter Emma, and she followed that turn with prominent guest spots on "Monk" (USA) and "Charmed" (WB) and a supporting feature role in the retro musical "Down With Love" (2003) opposite Renee Zellweger and Ewan McGregor. George got her breakthrough in 2003 when she landed the role of Lauren Reed on the ABC series Alias. Also that year, she became Rachel's nanny in the American sitcom Friends. Her first starring role in a feature film was Kathy Lutz in the 2005 remake of The Amityville Horror. The same year, she played Deanna Schine in the thriller Derailed, co-starring Clive Owen and Jennifer Aniston. George’s star continued to rise with a strong supporting role in the noir thriller, “Derailed” (2005), in which she played the schoolteacher wife of a Chicago ad executive (Clive Owen), an unhappily married man whose affair with a vibrant woman (Jennifer Aniston) leads to a pitfall of crime and deception after a sadistic robber (Vincent Cassel) breaks into their hotel room, holds them at gunpoint and pushes him into a series of blackmails that force the executive to choose between telling his wife and police or perform increasingly violent and dangerous criminal acts. 2006 was a busy year for George, who filmed three new movies; the drama Music Within, opposite Ron Livingston, the thriller Waz, opposite Stellan Skarsgård, and the film adaptation of the graphic novel 30 Days of Night, directed by David Slade and co-starring Josh Hartnett. Also this year, she starred in the horror-thriller Turistas. George made her return to television in 2008 in the HBO half-hour drama In Treatment, co-starring Gabriel Byrne and Dianne Wiest. In 2006 it was announced that George would be the new face and spokesperson for cosmetics company Napoleon Perdis, and the Australian jewelry company Linneys. She has also been appointed as an official ambassador for the 2007 52nd World Artistic Roller Skating Championships. George lives in Los Angeles with her husband Claudio Dabedz and his daughter (from a previous relationship), Martina (born 1995). She and Dabed met in Bali in 1998 and married on 22 September 2000. |
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