Megan Lynne Dodds was born on February 15, 1970, in Sacramento, California. After high school, she enrolled in a community college, where she was cast as Bananas in John Guare's The House of Blue Leaves. She next went to Juilliard School, where she studied for four years as a member of the Drama Division's Group 24 (1991–1995).
After going to England in 1997, Dodds met fashion and advertising Photographer Oliver Pearce. They later married and moved to Battersea, London. They have one child, Isabella, born c. 2001.
Dodds portrayed a "more conventionally beautiful" Marguerite as stepsister to Cinderella in Ever After (1998), a romance where Dodds' character is further described as "scarier than any ugly stepsisters that came before her, especially as it appears, briefly, that she has a legitimate shot at winning the prince".
Dodds' stage roles include a part in As You Like It (1999).
Dodds has appeared in television shows such as Love in a Cold Climate (2001), the BBC series Spooks (in the U.S., MI-5; 2002-2004), and Viva Blackpool. Dodds was a part of the first series cast of the BBC One sitcom, Not Going Out in 2006 as Kate, the love interest of the lead character Lee Mack, leaving the show after the first series.
In Up for Grabs (2006, Wyndham's Theatre, London), Dodds filled the role of a dot com Entrepreneur, co-starring with Madonna, which played to a lack of critical success for the headliner, but that nevertheless saw Dodds grouped, positively, with "strong supporting players", as Mindy, Madonna's seductress, where she was described as combining "sexiness and solitude".
Dodds won the London Theatregoers' Choice Award for Best Actress in 2007 for the one woman show My Name is Rachel Corrie, about an Activist killed by an Israeli bulldozer during a 2003 demonstration in Gaza. The show opened at the Royal Court Theatre in London. A move was planned to the New York Theatre Workshop, but it was cancelled in Fall 2005—amid rumors that the Workshop feared possible response to the show's political content. Dodds fought against the imposed indefinite delay, and the debate of censorship on such a sensitive issue at the time of the post-Iraq war debate became publicised by The New York Times. After a successful run in London's West End, the show eventually played to a sellout audience at the off-Broadway Minetta Lane Theatre in early 2006.
