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father’s first marriage), Thomas Junior, agrees. ‘I’m sure a lot of boys were running after Meggie, because she was very pretty, but they’d have to get past Dad first — and that wasn’t easy,’ he told me with a smile. ‘He is 6ft 3in and was pretty strong in those days.’
Her mother, Doria, an African- American social worker turned yoga teacher and therapist, who was divorced from Thomas Senior when Meghan was six years old, was also strict when it came to boys.
Tight-fitting clothes and low- cut tops were strictly forbidden, and she spelled out her reasoning to Meghan in blunt terms: ‘Never give the milk away for free.’
On her ‘prom’ night at the Immaculate Heart High School — an exclusive Catholic establishment in Los Angeles — Meghan was escorted by Danny Segura, a handsome pupil from a nearby boys’ school. But her first real boyfriend was his older brother, Luis, now an estate agent in Pasadena.
He told me that he’d been in contact with Meghan recently, adding: ‘I’d like to talk about the good times we had, but she’s a very private person, and it’s a big deal with the royals, so I can’t. All I’ll say is, she’s great.’
AsTONISHINGLy, given Meghan’s beauty and winning personality, in the years since she became a well-known actress, no other men have come forward to claim they stole her heart.
She met the next important male in her life when, after gaining straight As in her high school graduation exams, she went to university.
She was offered three scholarships, but turned them all down to study theatre (combined with international relations) at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where the drama department was renowned for nurturing talent.
For a girl of mixed race, raised in the ethnic and cultural melting-pot of Los Angeles, it was a chastening experience. Just 14 miles north of Chicago, Evanston is a relatively small town, and the Midwestern campus proved itself small-minded in some of its attitudes.
MEGHANhas said that she met with ignorance and prejudice among her fellow students. When she told a faculty member her father was white and her mother black, and that they had divorced when she was very young, the girl fixed her with a knowing look and said this ‘made sense’.
For Meghan, the implication was that the failure of an inter- racial marriage was inevitable.
However, her saviour was Larnelle Quentin Foster, now 35, a flamboyant, larger- than- life African-American student who also aspired to an acting career. Though they were in different classes, he told me, they became ‘soul-mates’ and remain close.
Indeed, they met up again recently in London, where he was visiting friends and she was in the UK seeing Prince Harry.
Meghan and Larnelle became constant companions, but theirs was not the conventional campus friendship, of spending time in each other’s rooms or at bars.
He lived locally with his parents, who were both pastors, and she would have meals with his family at weekends and attend services at their church.
They also enjoyed cooking exotic meals together — Indian dishes were Meghan’s speciality — watching avant-garde theatre shows, and ‘just hanging out’.
‘We were very social, put it that way,’ he said, laughing. ‘ We were always doing different things, having fun.
‘She was ambitious to be an actress, but we didn’t want to be in rehearsals all day like a lot of the others. We would much rather watch a show than be in one.’
Asked to describe Meghan’s character in those days, Larnelle, now
a professor of drama, says she was ‘ very kind, very genuine, someone who cares deeply about her family, her friends and the world’.
He adds: ‘She was also very quirky — and always smiling. I never saw her mad.’
His parents also adored Meghan — particularly his mother, who clearly hoped they might one day settle down together.
What Larnelle had not told her — or indeed anyone else at that stage — was that he was gay, so could never countenance marrying Meghan, much as he adored her.
‘If my mother had had her way, of course I’d be with Meghan,’ he says. ‘She would say: “Oh, I love Meghan so much.”
‘I was like, “Yes, Mom, I do, too” but it was never going to happen. I obviously knew she was a beautiful woman, but it was just not on my radar.
‘Only a few years ago, my mother told someone over dinner that Meghan was my ex-girlfriend.
‘I had to say: “Mom, that’s not true.” ’
WASMeghan aware that he was gay? ‘ I’m pretty sure she was. But I didn’t tell her outright because I wasn’t ready then. The straight guys would have died to be in my position. They’d say: “How do you go out with her?” And I would say: “Because I’m not trying anything!’’’
After graduating from university, eager to broaden her horizons and to learn Spanish, Meghan spent several months as an intern at the U.S. embassy in Buenos Aires.
Already a committed feminist, with a strong social conscience, at that point she was unsure whether or not she wanted a career in the shallow, chauvinistic Hollywood entertainment industry. If anything, she was thinking then that she might become a producer.
A brief trip home to Los Angeles changed all that.
Meghan attended a party where she fell under the admiring gaze of an acting agency manager. The next day, he watched a student film she had made.
‘Stick me with me — you’re going to make money,’ he told her.
Hawking herself around the studios was a demeaning task, though. Larnelle Foster, who’d also beaten a path to Hollywood, saw how his friend was forced to compromise her high-flown ideals.
‘She started doing that “suitcase girl” thing on Deal Or No Deal,’ he recalls, referring to the forgettable interlude when Meghan was a glamorous gofer on the cheesy game- show, wearing five- inch heels and a revealing red dress.
‘ That was just funny,’ says Larnelle. ‘ But it was just one of those things she needed to do to make money. It takes a while to get a movie or TV job.’
A succession of similarly unedifying roles followed in the TV soap General Hospital and crime show CSI, with Meghan often appearing in scanty lingerie.
Then there was a 30-second part in a box-office turkey called A Lot Like Love. This time, she wasn’t even named in the credits, which listed her only as ‘Hot Girl’.
That was in 2005, the year she began dating Trevor Engelson.
Precisely how much influence he had on her early career is open to debate. However, as he was already making his name in Hollywood, he must have used his influence to help her progress.
With his sandy hair and square jaw, in his younger days Engelson did not look unlike Prince Harry. But their personalities and, of course, their backgrounds are light years apart. The son of a wealthy, Jewish orthodontist from Great Neck, an uber-affluent town in Long Island, Engelson is a brash, go-getting New Yorker.
Last year, in a podcast interview, Engelson — whose company has produced movies starring Bradley Cooper, Sandra Bullock and the late Robin Williams, and represents Trainspotting writer Irvine Welsh — described how he ‘hustled’ his way to success.
Having started out as a lowly production assistant, he was so impressed by his bosses’ cushy lifestyle that he set out to emulate them, he said in the highly revealing, expletive-ridden interview.
‘They were great at what they did, but they didn’t look like they were working that hard and they were making a bunch of money, and they had the cutest girls on set,’ he rasped.
‘I was like, “I want to do that! That looks a good job!”’Engelson soon moved on to work for a major literary agent, but then his prospects suffered a major blow.
HEWAS fired, he admits, for using his employer’s letter- headed notepaper to pitch his own ideas. It might have finished lesser men, yet at just 24 he set up a company called Underground Films and began signing writers. His thirst for success was, and remains, unquenchable.
Even while taking his morning steam-shower, he claims, he sits and pores over polythene-covered film and TV scripts — reading several at a time and marking them with a waterproof pen. But he also, he says, works equally hard at having a good time.
‘If I’m on a plane somewhere, I’m working. When I land, I’m working. When I’m drinking, I’m working. But I’m always having a lot more fun than most people I know,’ he says.
‘I’m a gigantic believer that all this s*** can come to an end tomorrow, and you gotta take advantage of the ride.’
His philosophy clearly appealed to the comparatively inexperienced Meghan, who was just 24 when they met. Friends say she was besotted with him, forever hugging and kissing him, and calling him ‘Trevity-Trev-Trev’.
During a conversation in a London pub with Piers Morgan last year — before her relationship with Harry became known — she inadvertently revealed how greatly Engelson had influenced her.
Her motto in life, she told Morgan, was this: ‘Never give it five minutes, if you are not prepared to give it five years’.
It sounded original, but on his podcast Engelson cited precisely the same adage, saying it had resonated with him when he first heard it, years ago.
MEGHANeventually moved in with Engelson, sharing the tiny, yellow bungalow with a postage-stamp garden, just off Sunset Boulevard, where he still lives.
Had she remained a bit-part actress, they might still be living there together. But in 2010 — the year they got engaged — Meghan auditioned to play the role of Rachel Zane, a sophisticated, sexy New York legal assistant, in a new cable network series, Suits. She landed the part. Having struggled for recognition for almost a decade, she was understandably thrilled.
Engelson appeared to share her delight, hailing the success of his ‘badass fiancée’ on Facebook. But then she jetted off to Toronto to film where, after the TV series was successfully launched, she suddenly became a big fish in what was a relative showbusiness backwater.
For Meghan, it was intoxicating. She found herself mingling not only with any A-list celebrities who were in town, but with politicians eager to be associated with her fame and allure.
Canadian magazines featured her on the cover, and published her views on racism, women’s rights and other causes she’d become involved with.
Swept up by this seductive new world, no wonder the prospect of a five-hour flight back to Trevor and their little yellow bungalow in LA seems to have lost its appeal.
Meanwhile, other powerful and attractive men were clamouring around her. Among them was Britain’s most eligible bachelor. And as we shall see next week, his attentions proved irresistible.
MONDAY: Dumped by a star chef and modelling herself on Diana