Melissa Howard
| Melissa Beck | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Melissa Howard February 12, 1977 |
| Occupation | Actress |
| Spouse(s) | Justin Beck |
| Children | 3 |
Melissa Beck (born Melissa Howard) is a reality show personality, and comedian, known for her time as a cast member on the 2000 reality television series The Real World: New Orleans, and the 2002 - 2005 prank show Girls Behaving Badly.
Melissa Howard was born February 12, 1977 in Okinawa, Japan to a Filipino mother and a black father. She, her older sister Marlene and her younger brother, Michael, grew up in Valrico, Florida. She attended Brandon Senior High School and the University of South Florida, from which she graduated with a degree in journalism and mass communications.
In 2000, 22-year-old Howard was one of seven people selected from a pool of 35,221 applicants to be cast on the The Real World: New Orleans, the ninth season of the long-running MTV reality television series. MTV producer and casting director, Andrew Hoegl explains that she was selected on the basis of her audition tape, which he calls "hysterical", and credits the season's humor to Howard, who referred to herself in her audition tape as a "half-black, half-Filipino Chris Rock". Filming took place over the course of 124 days between January and late May 2000. Her 2000 MTV biography describes her has possessing a "manic wit".
After filming ended, Howard move to Los Angeles to pursue a career in standup comedy, as well as to engage in acrylic painting, an interest she developed while in New Orleans. For several years, she maintained a personal blog and website, Princess Melissa, which she set up and began writing in shortly after her stint on The Real World. It now directs to her Tumblr page, which is simply called Melissa Beck.
Howard was ranked #92 on Maxim magazine's "Hot 100 Women of 2004" feature.
She was a member of the all-female cast of the Oxygen network's hidden camera/practical joke reality television series Girls Behaving Badly, which aired from 2002 – 2005. In 2005 appeared on Bravo's Battle of the Network Reality Stars.
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