Jennifer Garner

Jennifer Anne Garner was born on April 17, 1972, in Houston, Texas, and relocated to Charleston, West Virginia at age three. Her father, William John Garner, earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in chemical engineering from Texas A&M University and worked as a chemical engineer for Union Carbide. Her mother, Patricia Ann English, was a homemaker who later taught English at a local college. Garner has two sisters and has described herself as a typical middle child. The family attended a United Methodist Church each Sunday, and Garner and her sisters were not permitted to wear makeup, pierce their ears, paint their nails, or dye their hair during their teenage years. She completed her secondary education at George Washington High School in Charleston.

In 1990, Garner enrolled at Denison University in Granville, Ohio, switching her major from chemistry to theater and joining the sorority Pi Beta Phi. During the fall semester of 1993, she studied at the National Theater Institute at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Connecticut. She also worked summer stock theatre during her college years, including stints at the Timber Lake Playhouse in Mount Carroll, Illinois in 1992, the Barn Theatre in Augusta, Michigan in 1993, and the Georgia Shakespeare Festival in Atlanta, Georgia in 1994. In addition to performing, she helped sell tickets, build sets, and clean venues. Garner graduated in 1994 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in theater performance.

Garner moved to New York City in 1995, beginning a Broadway career that would span from that year through 2007. During her first year in the city, she earned $150 per week as an understudy for the Roundabout Theatre Company in a production of A Month in the Country. She went on to star in Cyrano de Bergerac on Broadway as well. To supplement her income during this period, she worked as a hostess at a restaurant on the Upper West Side and did babysitting, including watching Madeleine Colbert, the daughter of Stephen and Evie Colbert. Her first on-screen appearance came during this time, playing Melissa Gilbert's daughter in the romance miniseries Zoya.

In 1996, Garner appeared in the television movie Harvest of Fire, playing an Amish woman, and in the Western miniseries Dead Man's Walk as a shopkeeper. She also made one-off appearances in Spin City, Swift Justice, and Law and Order. After relocating to Los Angeles in 1997, she landed her first leading television role in the film Rose Hill and made her feature film debut in the period drama Washington Square. Additional film appearances followed, including the comedy Mr. Magoo, the independent drama 1999, and Woody Allen's Deconstructing Harry, though most of her performance in the latter was cut. In 1998, she was cast as a series regular in the Fox drama Significant Others, which was canceled after three of six filmed episodes aired, and then joined J. J. Abrams' college drama series Felicity. In 1999, she was cast as a series regular in the Fox teen drama Time of Your Life, though that series was also canceled midway through its first season.

Garner's profile rose considerably in the early 2000s. She had a small role as a nurse in the 2001 war epic Pearl Harbor and appeared briefly in Steven Spielberg's crime comedy-drama Catch Me If You Can (2002), playing a high-class call girl opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in a single day of filming. Spielberg, having seen her work on Alias, reportedly believed she would become a major star. Her most significant career development of that period was being cast as Sydney Bristow in the ABC action thriller series Alias, which ran for five seasons from 2001 to 2006. Creator J. J. Abrams wrote the role with Garner in mind. Her salary on the series began at $40,000 per episode and reached $150,000 per episode by its conclusion. For her performance, Garner received the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Television Series Drama, the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series, and four nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series.

While Alias was in production, Garner continued working in film. She played Elektra opposite Ben Affleck's Daredevil in the 2003 superhero film Daredevil, later reprising the character in her own film. In 2004, she took her first leading film role in the romantic comedy 13 Going on 30, playing a teenager who finds herself in the body of a thirty-year-old. She also appeared in Juno (2007). Further film credits include Pearl Harbor (2001), Catch Me If You Can (2002), Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (2009), Valentine's Day (2010), Dallas Buyers Club (2013), Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (2014), Love Simon (2018), Peppermint (2018), Yes Day (2021), and The Adam Project (2022). In 2023, she starred in the Apple TV+ drama series The Last Thing He Told Me.

Beyond her acting career, Garner serves on the board of Save the Children USA and advocates for early childhood education. She is co-founder and chief brand officer of Once Upon a Farm, an organic baby food company, and has been a vocal advocate for anti-paparazzi campaigns aimed at protecting the children of celebrities.