Rebecca Mader

Rebecca Mader is the British actress who portrays the Wicked Witch of the West and Zelena on ABC's Once Upon a Time.

Biography
Rebecca Mader was born on April 24, 1979 in the town of Cambridge in England. She is of partial German descent. Rebecca started out at a successful model at sixteen for the Ford Modeling Agency. In early 2000, she transitioned into acting on television by landing television guest spots. She worked on several soap operas and was offered a contract role on All My Children in 2003, but she turned it down in favor of a seventeen episode arc on the soap drama as English gangster Morgan Gordon. Three years later, Rebecca had a memorable turn as a fashion editor in the film The Devil Wears Prada. Her break into fame when she joined the cast of the hit television show Lost in 2008 as cultural anthropologist Charlotte Lewis, with an original eight episode stint that grew to twenty episodes in total. After wrapping up her role on Lost, she looked to the big screen, where her projects included portraying Ewan McGregor's ex-wife in the 2009 film The Men Who Stare at Goats.

Trivia

 * The role of the Wicked Witch of the West was written specifically for her.
 * Additionally, Rebecca channeled her real-life experience of being bullied for twelve years into her on-screen portrayal of the Wicked Witch of the West.
 * Her character on Lost was originally written as an American, though she convinced the producers to make her British.
 * Admitted on Jimmy Kimmel Live that she was not a fan of Lost before being cast on the show, but has caught up from watching the DVDs.
 * Appeared as Eve in a 2003 Barely There lingerie commercial shot by famous photographer Richard Avedon.

Appearances
Note: "Archive" denotes archive footage.