Michelle Manhattan was born in the Deep South, in the Louisiana city of Monroe 27 years ago, to Eddie and Emily Sue Ward. She came from a large, religious family and has one older brother, Michael. Susan had a very happy upbringing and was raised on a farm with lots of animals, leading her to dream of a career as a vet. A tomboy, Susan competed as a BMX racer and always loved NASCAR, which she still watches and now competes in herself. She attended Ouachita Parish High School, transferring to River Oaks High, a small private school, her final year. She was not very popular and did not enjoy school much, although she was a fairly good student.

Age 13, Susan was shopping in a local mall with her mother when a model scout approached them, offering to take her to a model competition in New York. Susan always wanted to go to New York so she told her parents modelling would be a great way to pay for college. She and her mother travelled to Manhattan for the contest and the Ford agency offered her a contract. For the next three years Susan travelled to New York during the school holidays to model, remaining at home and attending school in Louisiana when she was not working. The change made her grow up fast, and with Ford pressuring her to "act like an adult," Susan dated lots of men, losing her virginity at 14. She worked sporadically as a child model in catalogues, magazines, even teen novel covers when she was older. Although she landed mostly small jobs - no fashion shows or magazine covers - her career success changed her mind about veterinary school. "I was making money and I didn't want to have to save it. I didn't want to go to school for years, plus I got squeamish and couldn't handle animals getting sick or dying. So I decided not to go to college and blew all the money." 

At 16, Susan accompanied a friend to an acting class. "I loved watching them and it made me realise I wanted to act, too. I knew that I could act and that I would succeed." Her model agency got her a non-speaking walk-on in TV series Swans Crossing and when Ford ended her contract, Susan decided to stay in New York permanently and become an actress. She started taking acting classes and going on auditions and soon landed a walk-on role in one episode of soap opera All My Children as Camille, a bitchy waitress. The show gave her her first real acting job a year later when they brought her character back. It was small 'under 5' role (less than 5 lines per episode) and Camille was written out 5 months later, after attempting to seduce one of the main characters.

Susan then returned home to Louisiana, where she enrolled in college to study psychology. Dreaming of acting stardom, she dropped out after a short time and headed for California. Still only a teenager, Susan moved into a small apartment in Westwood furnished with only an air mattress and an alarm clock, and began auditioning. With little training or experience and knowing no one in LA, finding work was hard and it would be over a year before Susan landed her first job in Hollywood. In January 1996 TV mogul and producer Aaron Spelling cast her in the small supporting role of bitchy Bree in his new primetime series, Malibu Shores. The show started airing that March and was cancelled after 8 episodes, a ratings flop. Susan continued to find work, guest starring in one episode of Hercules and appearing as an extra in soft porn video movie Poison Ivy 3: New Seduction. Her private life was going just as well. She started dating artist Joe Hanson after they met at her 20th birthday party, and the pair soon fell in love and started living together. Susan completed her family "her babies," cats Buffy, Velvet and Sawyer. 

Aaron Spelling remembered Susan from Malibu Shores and that autumn, while casting for his new daytime soap opera Sunset Beach, asked her to read for the lead role of sweet, innocent ingénue Meg Cummings. Susan got the role and on 19th November, 1996 started work on the show that would make her a star. The soap began with Meg discovering her fiancé Tim cheating on her and running away to Sunset Beach, California to meet 'SB', the man with whom she had been chatting on the internet, and, felt Meg, her soulmate. Once there Meg started working for and befriended brooding widower Ben Evans (Clive Robertson), and once Ben was revealed to be 'SB', the pair's sometimes rocky but always loving romance began. Clive and Susan became friends, and although Susan's acting was initially poorly reviewed by critics, they quickly became the show's first supercouple, much loved by viewers around the world.

Over three years the couple survived many traumas, from the machinations of Tim and Ben's best friend Annie, to Ben's evil, homicidal twin Derek. Susan had problems too, suffering a bad bout of pneumonia, Joe breaking up with her (temporarily) and her father suffering a heart attack all during the first year on the show. In October 1998 Ben and Meg married, only to have their reception interrupted by Maria - Ben's presumed dead wife. Their lives were further disrupted by the arrival of Benjy, supposedly Ben and Maria's child (actually Derek's). Susan won much acclaim from the soap press, as well as two 'Best Couple' award nominations. Sunset Beach was cancelled due to low ratings and the final show aired on Millennium Eve with Ben and Meg's (real) wedding. 

It was a big year for Susan. At the start of 1999 she and Joe got engaged, and she had a steady job as a daytime ingénue. By December her life was very different, with a new boyfriend, career and image. The image came first, courtesy of large breast implants (from her natural 34A to a 34D), unconfirmed liposuction, long hair extensions, black hair dye and a strict diet and exercise regime. The plan - to catch the eye of movie bosses and escape being "stuck on a soap" - worked, and during the summer she left Sunset Beach for three months to star in her first movie, erotic thriller The In Crowd (the soap was cancelled during her absence and she returned as Meg for the show's final few weeks). Susan played murderous bisexual debutante Brittany, performing a topless scene, a nude sex scene (non full frontal) and a lesbian sex scene.

She caught the eye of the movie's producer David Robinson, describing the moment as "love at first sight." Despite still living with fiancé Joe (who accompanied her to the movie's location in Charleston), they started seeing each other during the three month shoot. Susan and Joe broke off their engagement the following year.

The In Crowd was released in summer 2000 and was a critical and commercial flop. The studio later released a special 'uncut' edition DVD containing the nude sex scenes deleted from the theatrical version. The movie, which grossed around 1/5 of its budget, found some success on video and cable. Susan spent most of 2000 auditioning for acting work, and modelling, shooting nude and scantily clad spreads for many men's magazines. Susan had only 19 days acting work that year (9 days in April filming sci fi pilot Day One, which was not picked up, and 10 days in October filming a small role in straight-to-video comedy Going Greek), but her frequent men's magazine appearances made her a celebrity and landed her on many 'sexiest woman' lists. 

In April 2001 Susan landed her first major movie job, a small supporting part in the Farrelly brothers comedy Shallow Hal. She worked on the movie for two months that spring playing Jill, Hal's neighbour. Shallow Hal opened in November and was a moderately big hit (#2 in the box office). She appeared on screen for less than 5½ minutes but, promoted as one of the stars of the movie, Susan garnered much publicity, including her first magazine cover (topless for Maxim), followed by covers on men's magazines Ramp and Controversy. Many entertainment and men's magazines worldwide have since used old pics of her on their covers. In Oct/Nov she filmed her second starring role, as Olivia, the girlfriend of the main character in independent movie Would I Lie To You? The movie, a modernised version of The Importance of Being Earnest, has not yet found distribution. She then guest starred on sitcom Men, Women and Dogs.

2001 saw as much happiness in her private life as in her career. Early in the year she and David started living together. Soon after they bought a dog, chocolate boxer Dixie. Unfortunately some of her existing 'family' didn't get along too well with the new addition, and Susan got rid of of two of her three cats after they started peeing on her furniture. Susan ended a happy, success-filled year by getting engaged to David.

2002 was a slow one for Susan. She did only one photoshoot (again topless) and three interviews and made just one acting appearance, a small guest spot on Friends. Although she was due to star in independent movie A Midsummer Night's Rave, she was recast before filming began and her four days filming on Friends was her only acting work during the year 2002. Early on in the year she allegedly had more cosmetic surgery to reduce her breast implants from a D to a C (not confirmed). Spending most of 2002 firmly out of the spotlight, she made her annual appearance in various men's mags Sexiest Woman polls, and could be seen at numerous parties all over the USA. 

2003 started slow for Susan, but soon she started making her way back into the spotlight both in print and on TV. In March she appeared on the cover of men's magazine Ramp in a 10 page lingerie spread, was boxing magazine Fight Sport's Babe of the Month, and could be seen modelling clothes for Las Vegas Magazine. Susan returned to primetime on the crime series Boomtown, guest starring in one episode as stripper Layla French. She appeared in three scenes, one performing a pole dancing routine. In April she landed her first movie role since 2001, starring in the made-for-video sequel to the hit movie Wild Things. Susan plays 17 year old rich girl Brittany Havers, who schemes to get her stepfather's millions. With Wild Things 2 out on 31 December, and Going Greek finally released on 26 August, her fans will have ample opportunity to see her in 2003 - but not in theatres.