Megan Park Canadian Actress Born 1986 in Lindsay

Early life

Megan Park was born on 24 July 1986 in Lindsay, Ontario. She took her first small acting parts at the age of six and later attended Oakridge Secondary School in London, Ontario. She was also part of the Original Kids Theatre program. Coming from a small Canadian town with no contacts in the entertainment business, she has said she did not at first see writing and directing as something open to her.

Career

Park's earliest screen credits are from 2007, when she appeared in the films Charlie Bartlett and Diary of the Dead. Early television work included a guest part on the Lifetime series Angela's Eyes and an appearance on the Disney Channel show Life with Derek as Amy, a head cheerleader. From 2008 she became a regular on the ABC Family drama The Secret Life of the American Teenager, playing Grace Bowman, a devout teenager and cheerleader whose purity vow is tested. The series ran until 2013.

Over the following years she took film roles in A Cinderella Story: Once Upon a Song (2011), So Undercover (2012), Guns, Girls and Gambling (2012), The F Word (2013), the horror-thriller Demonic (in which she played Jules), and the Hallmark Channel film A Wish Come True. She also appeared in Room (2015) and in the comedy Central Intelligence (2016), which has a recorded worldwide box office of about $217 million. In 2009 she joined Codi Caraco and Brandi Cyrus in forming the band Frank + Derol, singing and playing bass, and left the group in 2010 to concentrate on acting.

Park began to move behind the camera while she was still acting. She wrote a television pilot about a girl trapped inside a TV show, which a major studio bought but never produced, and she says the experience showed her where her interests lay. Her first short film, Lucy in My Eyes, was shown at the 2017 Austin Film Festival. She co-wrote and co-directed the web series We're Adults Now with the Canadian writer Katie Boland, and she directed music videos for artists including Billie Eilish, Gucci Mane, Mike Posner, Alina Baraz and Blackbear.

Her first feature as writer and director, The Fallout, starred Jenna Ortega and deals with the aftermath of a school shooting for a group of teenagers. It premiered at South by Southwest on 17 March 2021 and was released on HBO Max in January 2022. Park has said the story grew out of her view, as a Canadian working in the United States, of how common gun violence is there. Her second feature, My Old Ass, was meant to contrast with the first, a story she wanted to be joyful and healing. Set in the Muskoka region of Ontario, which she knows well, it stars Maisy Stella and Aubrey Plaza and grew out of nostalgia for her own teenage years and the idea of speaking to one's younger self. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on 20 January 2024 and was released in limited theatres in the United States by Amazon MGM Studios in September 2024.

After that film she developed the series Sterling Point, also set in Muskoka cottage country, with Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, who created The O.C. and Gossip Girl. It is credited to her as writer and director and debuted on Amazon Prime Video in August 2026. She is also preparing a third film, Die Alive, starring Zoë Kravitz, which she has described as about parenthood, ageing parents and friendship between women.

Recognition

The Fallout won three awards at South by Southwest in 2021, including the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award. For My Old Ass, Park received nominations for the Directors Guild of America Award for first-time theatrical feature film and the Writers Guild of America Award for best original screenplay.