Bio
Melissa George is an Australian actress best known for her starring role as Angel Brooks-Parrish in the television soap opera Home and Away, from 1993-1996.
George was born in Perth, Western Australia. The second-eldest of four children, she has two sisters (Kate and Marnie) and a brother (Brett). She attended Warwick Senior High School, where she trained in modern dance, tap, jazz, classical ballet and roller-blading.
From the age of seven until she was 16 she skated at national and international level and represented Australia on many occasions. While in her teens she embarked upon a modelling career, which led to her being voted Western Australia's Teenage Model of the Year.
When the popular TV soap Home and Away conducted a nationwide search for an actress to play the part of teenage tear-away Angel Brooks, Melissa auditioned and, despite having no previous acting experience, got the part.
This, however, meant leaving school and family behind and moving over 2,000 miles away to Sydney. The role of Angel turned the budding young actress into one of Australia's most popular celebrities. She twice won the Golden Logie (Australia's top TV award) and countless other accolades for her work on the show.
Thus it was a surprise when after about three years Melissa decided to quit, turning down a hefty financial inducement to stay, and pursue her career elsewhere.
She was a household name in millions of homes across the globe; she was nominated in the Best Actress category in the British TV awards, the only overseas star to feature; she was chosen to endorse many glamour and beauty products and was voted the Most Desirable Star on British TV by ITV viewers. Leaving Home and Away was a big jump into the unknown.
After several smaller roles in films such as Dark City and the TV series Roar, Melissa began to land bigger roles. Movies such as Sugar and Spice, New Port South and Mulholland Drive followed in quick succession, but it wasn't until the short-lived TV series Thieves with John Stamos that Melissa began to gain some big plaudits in the States.
In 2003, after doing a very popular guest-stint in the NBC show Friends (playing a lesbian nanny) and Monk (as a murderess actress), along with a role in the film Down with Love, Melissa landed a role in the hit series Alias - a series which started at the same time as Thieves, but survived a similar critical bashing and went on to be one of the network's most loved shows.
She played the character Lauren Reed, an agent with the Security Service who is married to Michael Vaughn (played by Michael Vartan).
After a full season as the duplicitous Lauren Reed - the character Alias fans loved to hate - Melissa landed the lead role in the 2004/05 remake of the 1979 classic, The Amityville Horror as Kathy Lutz opposite Ryan Reynolds' George Lutz.
No sooner had she finished filming Amityville, Melissa won the role of Deanna Schine - the supportive yet strong wife in the adaptation of James Siegel's Derailed, opposite Clive Owen and Jennifer Aniston.
Upon completion of Derailed, Melissa flew to Brazil to film the action-thriller Turistas, which was released in 2006.
In 2008 she had a role in the television series In Treatment, which she followed up with a recurring role as Dr. Sadie Harris in the hospital comedy-drama series Grey's Anatomy.
In 2010 she recurred on Lie to Me and the following year starred in the award-winning Australian series The Slap and the mini-series Bag of Bones, based on the novel by Stephen King.
In 2012 she had a starring role as Sam Hunter, Byzantium's top agent who is the product of a dark past and exercises self-discipline to the extreme and keeps her true self a closely guarded secret, in the mystery spy thriller television series Hunted.
As an entrepreneur, George developed and marketed the revolutionary product Hemming My Way, which assists in hemming garments without sewing by employing NASA technology and is sold in 21 countries.
Fluent in Spanish, the Australian actress now makes her home in New York, Buenos Aires and Paris. She won multiple awards as a champion roller skater, including the Australian national championship title.