Gemma Ward

Real Name  :  Gemma Louise Ward
Born             :  3 November 1987

Personal Life

Gemma Louise Ward born 3 November 1987 is an Australian fashion model turned actress. She was born on 3 November 1987 in Perth, Western Australia, the second of four children of Gary Ward, a doctor, and Claire, a nurse. She has an older sister, Sophie (who also became a model), and younger twin brothers, Oscar and Henry. She was educated at the Presbyterian Ladies' College and Shenton College. Gemma was the family clown whose ambition was acting. Her passion for acting was born in 1997, when she was cast as the witch in a school play of Hansel and Gretel when she was ten.

Ward's brush with modeling was an accidental one. She was discovered in 2002, at the age of fourteen, while accompanying her friends to the Australian modelling competition Search for a Supermodel. As she said herself in a Teen Vogue interview, she ended up being scouted herself: "I had come straight from my auntie and uncle's farm, and I was wearing this big gray barn jacket with mud all over it. When the scout came up to me, I said, 'No, thank you.' They forged my mum's signature [for mandatory parental consent], and pushed me in front of the cameras."
Ward didn't win the competition, but her fragile, unique look, got the attention of a spotter from Vivien's Model Agency who saw her potential and made a show reel. The show reel then landed on the desk of ace model scout David Cunningham from the New York agency IMG. "Look how confident she is. I mean, she looks like she's been doing this for years, and she's a 15-year-old kid walking in an alleyway in Perth. She's a supermodel, for sure," Cunningham said.

Ward has long aspired to pursue acting and drama is a passion that she has held since she was a child. She starred alongside Toni Collette and Rhys Wakefield in Australian director Elissa Down's film The Black Balloon as the girlfriend of a boy whose brother has autism. The Black Balloon had its world premiere at the 58th Berlin International Film Festival in Germany in February 2008, where it received a Crystal Bear as the best feature-length film in the Generation 14plus category. She was also cast opposite Liv Tyler in the suspense thriller The Strangers as one of the three masked intruders, "Dollface". In the summer of 2009, she took classes at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting in New York.

After three years out of the spotlight, Ward made her international stage debut in 22 March 2011 for the (PTC) Perth Theatre Company's production of The Ugly One. The play centres on the modern obsession with physical beauty and the need to resort to plastic surgery. Her star power brought the PTC publicity and boosted ticket sales. Perth Now’s Maria Noakes gave Ward positive reviews for her performance.

MTV Networks' NextMovie.com named her one of the 'Breakout Stars to Watch for in 2011'. In the summer of 2011, Ward played Tamara, an antagonistic mermaid, in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, opposite Johnny Depp.