Links of Interest:
Jennifer Garner's IMDB Page
People Magazine Profile
Garner's Charity Work
Yahoo! Movies Profile
Early Life
Jennifer Anne Garner was born on April 17, 1972 in Houston, Texas. She was raised by her mother Pat, a retired English teacher, and her father Bill, a chemical engineer in Charleston, West Virginia. Jennifer was the middle sibling of three girls, and now claims “I am the model middle child…I am patient and I like to take care of everyone. Being called nice is a compliment- it’s not a boring way to describe me”. Garner’s conservative upbringing included attending church every Sunday, not wearing make-up or a bikini, and waiting until the age of 16 to get her ears pierced, which she later joked made her family “just a step away from being Amish”. Garner attended George Washington High School in Charleston, and appeared in her first theater production in sixth grade. She studied ballet throughout her adolescence, but maintains that she was driven by determination and a love of the stage rather than natural talent. She carried this determination with her when she enrolled at Ohio’s Denison University, where she majored in drama (originally she had majored in chemistry) and worked in numerous theater productions.
Career
After graduating in 1994 Garner moved to New York City and worked as a hostess while pursuing a career in film and television. She earned $150 a week as an understudy in the play A Month in the Country, and was cast in her first television role as part of the made-for-TV movie Zoya. In the later 1990s, she made small appearances in individual episodes of Spin City, Law and Order, Significant Others, and Time of Your Life. Garner made her first big-screen appearance in Dude, Where’s My Car? as one of Ashton Kutcher’s girlfriends, and in 2001 played a small supporting role in the epic Pearl Harbor, which starred her future husband Ben Affleck. Meanwhile, Garner had held a recurring role in Felicity since 1998, and in 2001 producer J.J. Abrams approached her to audition for the role of spy Sydney Bristow in the new drama Alias. Garner had played stereotypically feminine characters up until that point and enrolled in a month-long private Taekwondo class to prepare for the audition. Although she was cast after several auditions, Abrams (the show’s creator) revealed that he remained worried about her success in the role, especially since on the first day of shooting Garner herself told him “I don’t think I can do this”. The show catapulted Garner to stardom and continues to define her career and star image. Early episodes of season one of Alias earned Garner a 2002 Golden Globe for “Best Actress in a Television Series- Drama”. During the show’s run, Garner received four consecutive Golden Globe Awards for Best Actress in a Television Drama as well as Emmy nominations for her lead performance, and the Screen Actors Guild Award for “Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series” in 2005. Alias concluded in May 2006 after a final season abbreviated due to Garner’s pregnancy, which was written into the season’s storyline.
During Alias’s run, Garner starred in several big-screen films, including Daredevil (2003) (which also starred future husband Affleck), 13 Going on 30 (2004), Elektra (2005), and Catch and Release (2006). She did not receive further critical or box office success until the comedy/drama Juno in 2007. Entertainment Weekly called Garner’s work the best female supporting performance of the Toronto Film Festival, saying “The star of Alias and The Kingdom does no butt-kicking in this sweet comedy. Instead, as a young wife desperately hoping to adopt, she’s funny, a bit tough, and unbelievably touching”. Garner later appeared in the romantic Comedy Valentine’s Day and made her Broadway debut as Roxanne in Cyrano de Bergerac.
Personal Life
In October of 2000 Garner married her Felicity co-star Scott Foley. They separated and later divorced in 2003, citing irreconcilable differences. Following the divorce, Garner dated Alias co-star Michael Vartan for eight months. In mid-2004 Garner started dating Ben Affleck, whom she had met while filming Pearl Harbor and later co-starred with in Daredevil. Affleck proposed on her 33rd birthday, and the two were married on June 29, 2005 in a private ceremony. On December 1, 2005 Garner gave birth to her first daughter Violet, and had her second daughter, Seraphina in early 2009.
