Dina Meyer was born and raised in Forest Hills, Queens, New York, but moved to Dix Hills, Long Island, just before her last year of junior high school. She has two siblings, an older brother named Gregory and a younger one named Evan. Her first experience in the entertainment industry came when she did some modeling from ages nine to 16. She always wanted to become an actress but her parents did not think that was a wise career move; they wanted her to get a good education, so she went to college and graduated in 1990 with a bachelor’s degree in business administration with a concentration in marketing (and a minor in French). She started her acting training at The Neighborhood Playhouse in New York, where she studied Sanford Meisner’s acting techniques, with Ron Stetson, for about three years. Other actors to receive such training are Sandra Bullock, Michael Douglas, Jeff Goldblum, Leslie Nielsen, Diane Keaton, among others. She got her first part in the soap opera Beverly Hills, 90210, which required her to move out to Los Angeles. Soon after, she scored the lead in the movie Johnny Mnemonic, in which she did almost all of her own stunts, establishing herself as an athletic actress. She moved to eastern Europe for six months while shooting her second movie, DragonHeart, which was a very physical role but also required her to deal with CGI special effects. In her very next movie, Starship Troopers, she starred with Casper Van Dien and Denise Richards, which again called for her skills as an athletic actress and gave her more experience with CGI. Her talent agent also represented Matt LeBlanc so, through her agent, she was able to score a recurring role on Friends. She next had a short-lived part on the TV series Michael Hayes and a guest-starring role in an episode of Ally McBeal before landing her next movie role opposite James Caan in Poodle Springs, which aired on HBO. Since then, she’s gone on to score an independent film project as well as other big-budget films.