Jennifer Garner Biography / Pictures
Garner was born in Houston, Texas and raised in Charleston, West Virginia. She studied ballet for nine years before enrolling as a chemistry major at Denison University. After realizing that she loved the stage more than science, she changed her major to drama.
She currently stars as the character of Sydney
Bristow in the TV show
More:
Male action stars are, of course, ten a penny. The
world never seems to tire of beefy guys in sweaty vests
pulping their victims with no concern for the Sixth
Commandment. Kick-ass females, though, are harder to
come by. Beyond the B-movie likes of Cynthia Rothrock,
we find that top-notch stars really only dabble in the
genre. Michelle Pfeiffer made a great Catwoman, but that
was a one-off. Uma Thurman threw her weight around in
Kill Bill and Paycheck, but that would not last.
Halle
Berry would press her claim in Die Another Day, the
X-Men franchise and, again, as Catwoman, but her best
work was clearly done in dramas.
Step forward Jennifer Garner. Having suffered a series
of false starts and painful cancellations, she would
finally break through in 2001 in the cult TV show Alias
as hard-hitting Agent Sydney Bristow, a college student
caught up in a sinister world of counter espionage, a
mistress of disguise and sudden violence. This was no
Scully, usually terrified and pulling a pistol when the
going got rough. Bristow was the real action deal, a
blistering update of Luc Besson's Nikita, her every
body-part a lethal weapon. When Garner then won the part
of Elektra in Daredevil and was so successful she
spawned her own spin-off, her muscle was undeniable.
That she also carried the comedy 13 Going On 30 meant
that an impressive new talent had arrived.
She was born on the 17th of April, 1972, in Houston,
Texas, the second of three girls, Melissa being older
and Suzannah younger. In 1975, when Jennifer was three,
her father, Bill, moved the family to Charleston, West
Virginia, where he would work as a chemical engineer for
Union Carbide and the children's mother Pat would teach
English at a local college. Charleston was state capital
but, with an urban population of just 53,000, was still
a small town isolated in the hills west of the Allegheny
Mountains. The Garners lived in a middle class area but,
Pat would claim later, due to her babysitting exploits
Jennifer would be well-known by half the town's
population.
At elementary school, Jennifer discovered a talent
for performing, being a perennial winner in the school
talent show. It was also noted that, when performing,
she had an abnormal hold over her peers. One teacher
recalled how once, clad in green overalls, she read a
folk tale to the other kids. Whenever anyone became
restless, she drew them back in by dropping one of her
shoulder-straps. A canny kid.
Her main prompting, though, came
courtesy of sister Melissa. Extremely good-looking,
class valedictorian, maths star and piano prodigy,
Melissa was a tough act to follow, so Jennifer had to
put in extra effort to gain the attention she desired.
And there would be no hiding from her sister's
accomplishments as, with the family often hosting
foreign exchange students, the pair would share a room.
All three girls were encouraged to learn piano and
ballet. At Charleston's George Washington High School,
Jennifer would also compete from the swim team and take
up the saxophone. So numerous were her extra-curricular
activities that she'd eat her evening meal in the car
between lessons.
But her speciality was really dancing. Once Melissa had
given up, Jennifer really began to take it seriously,
seizing the chance to succeed where her sister had not.
She would study it for nine years in all. Her teacher
Nina Denton Pasinetti would recall her weeping in the
class-room when she couldn't master a move. She also
noted that the girl was unusually cultured. On the day
before she left for college, Jennifer visited
Pasinatti's house to say thanks and goodbye, then stuck
around to watch the 1987 Oscar-winning classic Babette's
Feast. This was surely due to her parents' efforts to
widen their children's parameters with European
vacations. Another sign of Jennifer's academic intensity
lies in a photo from one of these. Sat in the midst of a
spectacular garden she sees nothing, her nose being
buried in a copy of Alex Haley's Roots.
As a teen, Jennifer has described herself as "a happy
nerd". She wore thick glasses, worked at Kelly's Men's
Store and, for one whole year, sported a purple hooded
sweatshirt bought on holiday (her mum was forced to
assure the school that it was indeed washed every day).
The Garners was a conservative household and the kids
were not permitted to wear makeup or nail varnish, or to
have their ears pierced. Uninterested in fashion or
popularity anyway, Jennifer hung out with similarly
nerdy kids and would stay in contact with most of them
even after world fame arrived. Charleston is just that
kind of town. Jennifer would later say "I felt very
protected and loved by the whole community and I still
do".
And there was the theatre. During the last three
years of High School, Jennifer would involve herself in
local summer stock. She sold tickets, and helped build
the sets and make the costumes. As an apprentice, she
would only occasionally perform - she really just wanted
to be involved. Her parents recognised this interest
and, though Jennifer believed herself to destined for a
practical life in science (like her dad), they saw in
her a performer and encouraged her to continue. It would
come as no surprise to them when, having graduated from
High School in 1990 and gone north to Denison University
in Granville, Ohio, she would quickly change from a
Chemistry to a Theatre major.
At college, Jennifer would not let
up in her blinkered pursuit of excellence. She joined a
sorority but was not one for parties. Wholly driven, she
didn't drink or experiment with narcotics or have very
much fun at all - something she later claimed to regret.
In the summer vacations, she worked in regional summer
stock, on one occasion, in Atlanta, suffering a cruel
blow to her confidence. Approaching a veteran New York
stage actress for career advice, she was told to forget
acting and train for a paralegal degree. Considering how
many actors really make a decent living, this was
actually sound advice, but Jennifer was not one to be
turned from her goal.
Graduating in 1994, it was thought that Jennifer would
continue her drama education at Yale. Instead, keen for
experience, she visited a friend in New York City in
1995 and decided to take her chances in theatre-land.
Almost immediately she won a part as understudy in a
Broadway production of A Month In The Country, starring
Ron Rifkin (who'd later play her evil boss in Alias).
Earning $150 a week, she wasn't getting rich, but she
was learning. While the other understudies played poker
out back, she stayed rooted to the stage-side, watching
every performance without fail, eight shows a week. For
extra money, she would work as a hostess at Isabella's,
a Mediterranean restaurant on the Upper West Side, famed
for its clientele of hipsters and stars.
With her eye on bigger prizes, Garner simultaneously
aimed at TV and film. Once again, work came quickly,
this time with the TV movie Zoya, based on a Danielle
Steel novel and the first of several films Jennifer
would make for the Hallmark company. This would follow
the fortunes of Zoya Ossipov, played by Melissa Gilbert,
a young Russian girl who flees the Bolshevik Revolution,
finds success in Paris as a ballerina, loses everything
in the Wall Street Crash and then wins out again in the
fashion industry. Jennifer would play Gilbert's daughter
who, feeling ignored in favour of mum's career and
second husband, takes up with a fortune hunter and
becomes estranged. Years later she reappears, resolves
her problems with Gilbert but then suffers a car crash,
Gilbert having to turn off her life-support machine.
Typical Hallmark stuff, then. But it was a reasonably
classy debut, considering Garner had co-starred with
David Warner and Diana Rigg.
After brief spots in TV series Swift Justice, Law And
Order and Spin City, Jennifer would now pop up in
another Hallmark production, Harvest Of Fire. Taking its
cue from Harrison Ford's Witness, this would see Lolita
Davidovich as an FBI agent investigating arson attacks
on an Amish community. Staying with (and gradually
befriending) Amish woman Patty Duke, she would both
solve the case and come to understand the religious folk
around her. Jennifer would appear as Duke's eldest
daughter in this thoroughly unexciting production.
Her next project would be another
Hallmark show, yet far more prestigious. This was Dead
Man's Walk, written by Larry McMurtry as a prequel to
the enormo-hit Lonesome Dove. This would see David
Arquette and Jonny Lee Miller as Gus McRae and Woodrow
Call (Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones in the
original), in their early struggles as Texas Rangers in
the 1840s, battling with bears, Apaches and the Mexican
army. Jennifer would appear as Clara Forsythe, a young
woman Arquette meets and falls for in Austin. As she had
to become the love of his life, a love so strong that,
even though lost, it captivated him into the the later
years of Lonesome Dove, she really had to turn on the
charm. And she did - her reviews were excellent.
The next year, 1997, would bring a rush of projects.
First came her fourth Hallmark role, the western Rose
Hill, based on Julie Garwood's novel For The Roses. Here
four orphaned brothers in Boston find a baby girl in the
trash and take her with them as they go west to build a
ranch and a life on the frontier. The girl grows up to
be Jennifer, and family life becomes a rollercoaster as
she falls for a man who kills one of the brothers and
then returns to Boston to discover her roots. Again,
typical Hallmark fare.
What came next most certainly wasn't. First came a very,
very brief part when she appeared in an elevator in
Woody Allen's inventive and autobiographical
Deconstructing Harry. Then came the historical drama
Washington Square, based on a Henry James novel,
directed by Agnieszka Holland and earlier filmed as The
Heiress, with Olivia De Havilland. This was a stark
examination of values in 19th Century New York with
Albert Finney trying to prevent daughter Jennifer Jason
Leigh from marrying gold-digger Ben Chaplin. Jennifer
would have a peripheral part as Leigh's cousin but once
again, sharing the bill with Leigh, Finney and Maggie
Smith, she'd be on an impressive cast-list.
The year ended with something infinitely more
light-hearted - Mr Magoo. Directed by Jackie Chan cohort
Stanley Tong, this was a Disney attempt to bring to
real-life the famed near-sighted and eccentric
millionaire cartoon character, with Leslie Nielsen in
the title role. Here Magoo, a benefactor of the Natural
History Museum, would show up at the unveiling of a
giant ruby, the Star of Kuristan, and attempt to pair
his naive nephew Waldo off with Kuristan's beautiful
representative, Stacey Sampanahoditra (Jennifer). But
the ruby's stolen, Magoo is accused, and everyone's off
to Brazil to find the stone and catch the crooks,
enduring, as you'd expect, many, many accidents and
near-misses along the way. Like most one-joke movies, it
wasn't a hit, but it was excellent exposure for Garner.
Having appeared alongside Orlando
Jones in the short In Harm's Way, Jennifer now returned
to TV in Significant Others, a new series from Chris
Keyser and Amy Lippman, the creators of the hugely
popular Party Of Five, a pre-Dawson's Creek show where
the Salingers, a family of orphaned kids, deal with teen
s--, drugs, menstruation, death and the like. This would
feature an ongoing love triangle between Scott Bairstow
(an aspiring writer now hacking out p---), Eion Bailey
(a wannabe producer of children's videos) and Jennifer,
as the hugely talented Nell Glennon, so afraid of
falling into a rut she resigns as soon as she's
promoted. It was all set for a long run and Jennifer was
garnering (ho ho ho) great reviews. She was praised for
her "enchanting tragi-comic performance" and for being
"almost larger than life". She even reminded one
reviewer of "Golden Age stars like Jean Arthur and
Ginger Rogers". Unfortunately, it was aired by Fox in
Party Of Five's slot while that show was "temporarily"
shelved and, in protest, PO5's fans refused to watch it
(or so the producers claimed). The first three episodes
were screened in March, 1998, then the show was pulled,
leaving a further three episodes unaired. Jennifer's
first big chance was gone, but connections had been
made.
More would be made soon. But first would come 1999 which
saw a group of 20-something New Yorkers partying their
way into the new millennium while discussing their lives
and their futures. Dan Futterman would have the central
role as a self-pitying neurotic who dumps his smart and
pretty girlfriend (Jennifer) in favour of office s--pot
Amanda Peet. It was good indie experience, but it had
nowhere near the effect of Jennifer next effort - a
brief appearance in the hit TV series Felicity (earned
after five rounds of auditions). This saw Keri Russell
star as Felicity Porter, an 18-year-old from Palo Alto
who disregards Stanford in favour of following her High
School crush (Scott Speedman) to New York. Here she
engages in a bitter/sweet/funny voyage of
self-discovery, chasing after Speedman while dipping
into a relationship with admirer Scott Foley. Jennifer
would show up in three episodes in 1998 and 1999,
playing Hannah Bibb, Foley's out-of-town girlfriend who
unknowingly foils his plots to get it on with Felicity.
Two major pluses came from these showy guest spots.
Firstly, she began an affair with Scott Foley which
quickly turned serious, leading to marriage in October,
2000. It was an odd relationship to begin with, Foley
playing the gentleman and holding off the first kiss for
a long while, even though the couple had already
stripped off and made out on the show. Secondly, she
managed to impress Felicity's creator Jeffrey Abrams.
Actually, when she next worked for Abrams the results
were so spectacular, they would strongly contribute to
her eventual break-up with Foley, the couple divorcing
in March, 2004.
Before this, though, her earlier
connections were to keep her in employment. Party Of
Five producers Chris Keyser and Amy Lippman were
launching a spin-off series, Time Of Your Life, based
around Jennifer Love Hewitt who'd played the girlfriend
of one of the Salinger boys. Here she'd left San
Francisco to find a more challenging life (and the
father she'd never met) in New York City, the small girl
in the Big Apple theme being similar to that of
Felicity. Jennifer would play her wannabe actress
room-mate, Romy Sullivan, and would see plenty of
action, engaging in a misguided relationship with
neighbour JB, having an affair with a married theatre
critic, losing a soap job to a rival who sleeps with the
director, having to eat spam-stuff for a TV ad and
having her life taken over by a friend from back home.
Again her reviews were good and the promotion was heavy,
but Time Of Your Life was doomed from the moment Fox
disliked the pilot and sent it back for reworking. As
with Significant Others, the show would be dropped with
episodes left unaired.. A second shot at TV stardom had
failed.
Jennifer Garner was back at base camp, but still persisting.
Next came the superior TV movie Aftershock: Earthquake
In New York which, as the title suggests, was a
throwback to the disaster movies of the Seventies. But,
being yet another Hallmark production, it concentrated
on the human emotions stirred up by the seismological
carnage, drawing together several separate stories. In
one, fire chief Tom Skerrit battled with mayor Charles
Dutton, in another a lawyer was trapped in the subway
with a possibly murderous client. Jennifer would play a
ballerina hitting on her rich father for money. During
the quake she's protected by and falls for a ditzy
Russian taxi driver played by Frederick Weller.
And now the cinematic success began. In Dude, Where's My
Car?, two stoners try to work out what happened the
night before - why they were waving wads of cash, why a
freaky cult thinks they have a machine that can
transport you beyond the solar system and, obviously,
what happened to the motor. The Beavis (ie. less
lame-brained) of the pair was Ashton Kutcher and
Jennifer played his girlfriend, frustrated by his low
libido, his lack of attentiveness and the general havoc
he inadvertently causes. Landing somewhere between
Wayne's World and the work of the Farrelly brothers, it
was a big hit, taking more than three times its $13
million budget at the box office.
Jennifer Garner would follow it with another big
money-spinner, Pearl Harbour. This saw Ben Affleck and
Josh Hartnett (who beat Ashton Kutcher to the part)
competing for the affections of nurse Kate Beckinsale in
1941 Hawaii, before and after the stunning Japanese
assault. Jennifer would play one of Beckinsale's fellow
nurses, a slightly geeky, very serious bookworm who's
the least mentally prepared for the sudden flood of dead
and dying. Despite being panned for its concentration on
head-spinning action the movie was still among the
highest earners of 2001.
Stepping briefly back into the
indie world, Garner could now be seen in Rennie's
Landing (called Stealing Time when re-released in a
longer form). This saw her once again play Scott Foley's
girlfriend (this time an ex) as a group of college grads
reunite in LA, discuss their dimming hopes and get drawn
into a crazy bank robbery.
And then it happened. When writing for his show,
Felicity, Jeffrey Abrams had often wished he could
expand and energise the plot-lines by having Felicity
involved in some major crime, or alien conspiracy,
something more fun. If only she could be a spy on the
sly. Now the idea came to fruition with a new show,
Alias, where the heroine Sydney Bristow would be a
college student who moonlights for the CIA. At least,
she THINKS she moonlights for the CIA - she's actually
working for SD-6, a shady group attempting to take over
the world.
Abrams naturally remembered Garner from her spots on
Felicity, but she wasn't a shoo-in for the part of
Sydney Bristow. Before the first audition she took up
her Yellow Pages and started Tae Kwon Do lessons with a
Master Yu, a punishing schedule that saw her running up
and down stairs and saw Yu screaming at her "Hit the
tiger, Jennifer, hit the tiger!" When she saw
five-year-olds who were more advanced than she, she came
close to quitting, but kept on. And it paid off. By the
time of the final audition, she was ready to show off a
few hot moves. Abrams wanted an actress who could do
girl-next-door and ninja assassin. Jennifer was in.
Alias was not an immediate smash, but its
intelligence, complexity and high quality action saw it
grow into a major cult hit. We discovered that Sydney's
father was a CIA agent claiming to be fighting SD-6, and
that her mother (Lena Olin) was a KGB operative who
might be a double agent for the CIA OR for SD-6. We saw
Jennifer is a crazy variety of wigs and costumes,
dressed as a naughty maid or cyberpunk, infiltrating and
double-crossing, straddling and battering big thugs (and
Quentin Tarantino), getting tortured and half-drowned,
having her teeth pulled like Dustin Hoffman in Marathon
Man and rushing hither and thither to a thumping techno
rhythm, much as Franke Potente did in Run, Lola, Run.
How could it possibly fail? From 2002 to 2004 she'd
receive consecutive Emmy and Golden Globe nominations,
actually winning a Globe in '02. The show also made her
a rich woman. For the first two series she received
$45,000 per episode, from then on it was $150,000.
Beyond this, in the wake of the September 11th attacks,
she'd be asked to appear in a promotional video for the
real CIA.
Now her projects were consistently
top-class. In Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can,
Garner added glamour in a brief role as a call girl who
enjoys an impassioned liaison with Leonardo DiCaprio's
Frank Abagnale Jr, a brilliant con-man on the run from
Tom Hanks's FBI agent. Then came Daredevil where she was
reunited with Ben Affleck, Affleck playing the title
role of Matt Murdock, the blind lawyer whose other
heightened senses allow him to take on mega-crims like
Kingpin and Bullseye. Jennifer would feature as Elektra,
spirited, spunky and out to avenge her dead father. With
Affleck battling the same villains, they're drawn to one
another, using kicking and swiping as a kinky form of
courtship.
Daredevil would take over $40 million in its first
weekend but its takings fell drastically away and it
only just scraped over the $100 million mark. Both
Spider-Man and X-Men had spawned successful sequels, but
Affleck's appeal was now doubted. Instead, the producers
looked to the movie's two stand-out performers -
Jennifer and Colin Farrell, who'd delivered an
appropriately manic Bullseye - and saw Jennifer as the
most likely figurehead of the franchise. So, 2005 would
see her headlining in Elektra, combatting the villainous
Typhoid Mary and finding trouble with The Order Of The
Hand, the sinister organisation of ninjas that trained
her and have ordered her to assassinate a man she comes
to care for. All those years of ballet and her ongoing
experience in Alias would combine to make her, as said,
the most impressive action heroine in years.
Beside the kicking, the pouncing and the punching,
Jennifer would also prove her comic abilities in her
first headlining role, as Jenna Rink in 13 Going On 30.
Here a young High School girl attempts to win favour
with the popular crowd but is cruelly rejected. Wishing
her traumatic youth away, she wakes to find she's
skipped 17 years and is now the sophisticated editor of
a fashionable New York magazine called Poise. Now we see
her attempting to come to terms with the adult world,
with s-- (gross!) and with Mark Ruffalo, an old
classmate she betrayed in her search for popularity and
to whom she hasn't spoken since she was a kid. There had
been many similar movies made before, most notably Tom
Hanks's Big, but this one had a charm of its own,
Jennifer putting in a sterling performance, and debuted
at Number 2, behind
Denzel Washington's Man On Fire.
Filmography
- Movies
- Daredevil (
-
- Time of Your Life (
- The Pretender (
- Felicity (
- Fantasy Island (
- Significant Others (
- Spin City (
- Law & Order (
- Dead Man's Walk (
- Rose Hill (
This Jennifer Garner Biography Page is Copyright © 2004 - 2009 Chuck Ayoub