American actress Meghan Markle to be a new kind of royal

The actress's most successful role is the feisty Rachel Zane in the TV legal show Suits, now in its seventh season. Her career has also included small parts on TV series including Fringe, CSI: Miami, Knight Rider and Castle, as well as movies including Horrible Bosses. Outside of acting, Markle founded a lifestyle blog called TheTig.com (which closed down in April without explanation), and has lent her celebrity status to humanitarian causes.

She has campaigned for women's equality for UN Women as an "Advocate for Political Participation and Leadership." At a 2015 star-studded event for the UN women's agency, she said: "I am proud to be a woman and a feminist." UN Women said in a statement late Monday that it "trusts and hopes that in her new and important public role she will continue to use her visibility and voice to support the advancement of gender equality."

Markle has written in Time magazine about girls' education and the stigma surrounding menstruation, and has traveled to Rwanda as global ambassador for the charity World Vision Canada. She has described how her mother took her to the slums of Jamaica to witness poverty first-hand, saying experiences like that shaped her social consciousness and charity work.

She has campaigned with the United Nations on gender equality, written in Time magazine about girls' education and the stigma surrounding menstruation, and has traveled to Rwanda as global ambassador for the charity World Vision Canada. She has described how her mother took her to the slums of Jamaica to witness poverty first-hand, saying experiences like that shaped her social consciousness and charity work.

Harry and Markle held hands for their first official appearance together in September in Toronto at the Invictus Games, a sporting event for wounded service personnel that Harry spearheaded.

Both were dressed casually in jeans, smiling and chatting as they arrived for a tennis match. Several days later, Harry was photographed kissing Markle on the cheek as he joined the actress and her mother in a luxury box to watch the event's closing ceremony.