身为世界名模、T台时尚界的宠儿，嘉玛·沃德是“天使面容魔鬼身材”的现实升级版，她的娃娃脸更娇嫩，她的眼神更清澈无辜，她娇小的身形更玲珑曼妙，整个人看起来是那么楚楚可怜，带着T台难得的少女的柔软纯净，时尚圈不惜用“模特界的外星人”来称呼她。

难怪当她从T台走向荧屏，浮出海面的时候，整个影院都在惊呼。事实上，《加勒比海盗4》不是这个15岁出道的职业超模最早的荧屏作品。早在2001年，她就参演了电影《粉色睡衣》，2008年又出演了《黑气球》和《陌生人》两部电影。

2008年因男友希斯·莱杰去世，嘉玛·沃德一度隐匿，甚至被拍到身材臃肿在海滩漫步。《加勒比海盗4》的惊艳亮相，宣告了隐匿两年多的嘉玛沃德强力回归，喜欢她的人们又有眼福了。

Gemma Ward was born on 3 November 1987 in Perth, Western Australia, the second of four children of Gary Ward, a doctor, and Claire, a nurse. She has an older sister, Sophie (who also became a model), and younger twin brothers, Oscar and Henry. She was educated at the Presbyterian Ladies' College and Shenton College. Gemma was the family clown whose ambition was acting. Her passion for acting was born in 1997, when she was cast as the witch in a school play of Hansel and Gretel when she was ten.

Ward's brush with modeling was an accidental one. She was discovered in 2002, at the age of fourteen, while accompanying her friends to the Australian modelling competition Search for a Supermodel. As she said herself in a Teen Vogue interview, she ended up being scouted herself:

I had come straight from my auntie and uncle's farm, and I was wearing this big gray barn jacket with mud all over it. When the scout came up to me, I said, 'No, thank you.' They forged my mum's signature [for mandatory parental consent], and pushed me in front of the cameras.

Ward didn't win the competition, but her fragile, unique look, got the attention of a spotter from Vivien's Model Agency who saw her potential and made a show reel. The show reel then landed on the desk of ace model scout David Cunningham from the New York agency IMG. "Look how confident she is. I mean, she looks like she's been doing this for years, and she's a 15-year-old kid walking in an alleyway in Perth...She's a supermodel, for sure," Cunningham said.