Happy birthday, Meghan Markle! 9 little known facts about the Duchess

Meghan Markle is celebrating her 38th birthday today! The Duchess of Sussex has had quite a ~royal~ year.

In 2019, she celebrated her first wedding anniversary with Prince Harry, the royal couple welcomed their first baby together Archie Harrison and the new mom has had the opportunity to work on important projects, including her guest editing gig for the September issue of British Vogue. 

Loyal royal fans out there might think they know everything about the Duchess of Sussex, but there are many little known facts about one of our favorite royals like a) her name actually isn't Meghan Markle and b) she has a love for literature.

Keep scrolling for other interesting facts in honor of the royal's birthday!

Her name isn't Meghan Markle

That's right! Meghan Markle was actually born Rachel Meghan Markle. Coincidentally, that also happens to be the name of her character on Suits.

She changed a national commercial at age 11

After seeing an Ivory soap commercial that claimed "women all over America are fighting greasy pots and pans," an 11-year-old Meghan wrote to the company (and then First Lady Hillary Clinton), requesting the sexist language be changed from "women" to "people."

“At age 11, I had seen a commercial at the time that I thought to be very sexist,” she said about that experience. “Truth be told, at 11 I don’t think I even knew what sexism meant. I just knew that something struck me internally that was telling me it was wrong, and I knew that it was wrong. And using that as my moral compass and moving through from the age of 11, at that age I was able to change this commercial."

She attended an all-girls Catholic school

Meghan went to Immaculate Heart High School, an all-girls Catholic school in Los Angeles. “I went to an all-girls Catholic school for like six years during the time when kids actually had handwriting class,” she previously told Esquire.

She did a double major in theater and International Relations

The Duchess of Sussex received a bachelor's degree from Northwestern University, where she completed not one, but two majors. "I knew I wanted to do acting, but I hated the idea of being this cliché—a girl from L.A. who decides to be an actress," she told Marie Claire.

"I wanted more than that, and I had always loved politics, so I ended up changing my major completely and double-majoring in theater and international relations.”

She did an intership in Argentina

During college, the 38-year-old royal did an internship in the American embassy in Buenos Aires. "It was their economic devaluation and our Secretary of the Treasury at the time, Paul O'Neill, was there, so I'm 20 years old, in Buenos Aires, in a motorcade, doing that whole thing," she shared with Marie Claire. "I thought for sure I would still have a career in politics.”

She was a briefcase girl on Deal or No Deal

Before her big break as Rachel Zane in Suits, Meghan admits she did a few interesting acting gigs. “I would put that in the category of things I was doing while I was auditioning to try to make ends meet,” she said. 

“Definitely working on Deal or No Deal was a learning experience, and it helped me to understand what I would rather be doing.”

She founded her own lifestyle blog

Before becoming a royal, the Duchess of Sussex ran her own lifestyle blog called the Tig, where she talked about food, fashion, beauty and travel. She also profiled inspirational women. 

"It's named after a wine called Tignanello," she previously said. "I had a sip of it six years ago, and it was my first aha moment. You spend years going, 'Oh, I'll just have red or white. I don't really know what the difference is.' But then one day you take a sip of something and you're like, I get it. So the Tig became this personal idea of getting it—fashion, travel, beauty, all of it."

Her handwriting is super neat

Growing up, Meghan's handwriting and cursive was always so neat that it eventually turned into a side gig. “My parents had been so supportive...watching me audition, trying to make ends meet, taking all the odds-and-ends jobs to pay my bills," she said. "I was doing calligraphy, and I was a hostess at a restaurant—and all those things that actors do."

"What it evolved into was my pseudo-waitressing job when I was auditioning. I didn't wait tables. I did calligraphy for the invitations for, like, Robin Thicke and Paula Patton's wedding,”  

She enjoys poetry

In her guest edit for the September issue of British Vogue, the Duchess of Sussex revealed she has a love for poetry and included her favorite poem by Matt Haig. Titled A Note from the Beach, the poem touches on the pressures to achieve the "perfect" summer body but from the ocean's point of view.