Laura McDonald was born Laura Lakshmi McDonald in New Dehli, India, on 6th November 1995. She is of Scottish-Australian, Italian, and Finnish descent. Her family returned to Sydney from India where she started school and began her life as a performer, studying classical ballet. At the age of 6, her family was uprooted again to Beijing, China. She attended a bilingual Chinese Mandarin primary school and switched ballet for competitive swimming. Back in Sydney, Laura studied French and German, and developed a love of theatre which culminated in an ATYP scholarship to the Glasgow Commonwealth Games. She was accepted into WAAPA (Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts) in 2015 and graduated with a BA in Acting in 2017. Other than theatre over 2018/19, she was cast as Inez in Michael Robotham's The Secrets She Keeps (Lingo Pictures) which will be shown on Network Ten in 2020.