Melissa McIntyre

Melissa Erin McIntyre (born May 31, 1986 in Port Colborne, Ontario, Canada), better known plainly as Melissa McIntyre, is a Canadian actress. She is best known for her role as gothic rocker "Ashley" in the television show Degrassi: The Next Generation.

McIntyre, whose nickname is Mel, had relatively humble beginnings in acting, as she was a participant of many community theater plays as a small girl. Among the plays that she participated in were The Wizard of Oz and The Secret Garden.

McIntyre is also one of the nowadays rare radio actresses, as she played the lead character in Disco Does Not Suck, a show that had a relatively long stay on the airwaves.

McIntyre made her television debut in the 1997 series, Timeswee, where she got to play an extraterrestial being. She was eleven when she participated in that show; her experience there would prove important in her future as an actress.

In 1998, she was cast for another television show, this one named Real Kids, Real Adventures.

McIntyre took some time off during 1999 to participate in main stage theater, but, in 2000, the young (thirteen years old at the time) actress returned to television, doing a voice-over in the series Mattimeo: A Tale of Redwall. She played the Cornflower character in that cartoon.

It wasn't until 2001 that McIntyre reached national fame in Canada, when Degrassi: The Next Generation, began to be recorded there. A sequel to the popular middle 1980s series Degrassi High, The Next Generation once again proved extremely popular among Canadian teenagers, and, by being cast as Ashley, McIntyre was given one of the leading characters of the series. Ashley is a member of a high-school music band, and McIntyre appears sporting both long and short hair in the series.

McIntyre's fame did not cross over to the United States, however, until 2002, when the show's rights to be shown on American television were bought over by Nickelodeon, which began to transmit it on The N, a channel geared towards teenagers. The show also became a hit immediately in the United States.

Trivia

 * Lives in a Toronto apartment with her boyfriend, Colin, her pet dog and her pet rabbit.
 * Was the subject of an episode of The N's Degrassi Unscripted.
 * Had long, puffy hair in season one of the series, then cut it all off by the fifth episode of season two. As of the end of season four, she is growing it long again thus far.