Born: Monroe, LA
Lives: Los Angeles.
Birthday: April 15
Status: Single
When Susan Ward was just a toddler, she followed the local veterinarian on his rounds and brought every stray animal she found to the private menagerie she and her parents called home. As a teenager, she had every intention of becoming a vet, until a modeling agent spotted her in a mall at the age of 13. Ward and her mom were convinced to travel to New York to investigate modeling opportunities. Ward saw it as the perfect way to finance her veterinary training and therefore was immediately enthused. Little did she know that the week long mother/daughter adventure in the Big Apple would lead to a contract with the prestigious Ford modeling agency.
"What just happened here?" Her mother asked as they left the agency, and then cried all the way back to their hometown of Monroe, La., over her daughter's good fortune. Over the next several years, Ward traveled back and forth between New York and Monroe as she built a solid modeling career and subsequently completed high school and several college courses.
After appearing in numerous public service announcements for the Northeast Louisiana Alcohol and Drug Abuse Association, she began taking acting lessons and soon thereafter embarked on a full-fledged acting career. She captured a small role on the popular daytime drama "All My Children" and a year later returned to the show as a recurring player. In June of 1995, she auditioned for a part on the NBC prime-time series from Aaron Spelling, "Malibu Shores." More than six months later, she was asked to fly to Los Angeles to test for the role. "I had completely forgotten about it," Ward recalls. It was at the test that she was first introduced to Aaron Spelling, a meeting which she describes as "very overwhelming": "I was very nervous at first, but he is one of the nicest men I've ever met and put me totally at ease." Needless to say, she got the role.
Ward feels a kinship to her "Sunset Beach" character, Meg, who leaves her longtime boyfriend at the altar in Kansas and travels across the country in search of a man she's never met: "She follows her heart -- she wants to find out what the world has to offer. Finding this man is the first thing she has ever been passionate about."
As a child, she raced the BMX bicycle circuit in Louisiana but now settles for a more relaxing mode
of transportation: rollerblading. She still has a love for animals and the outdoors but also enjoys the
company of a good book, especially classics and murder mysteries.