Jennifer Anne Garner (born April 17, 1972) is an American actress. She is known for her role as CIA officer Sydney Bristow in the ABC action thriller series Alias (2001–2006) and for her role in the romantic comedy film 13 Going on 30 (2004). She has received several awards including a Golden Globe Award with nominations for four Primetime Emmy Awards.
Born in Houston, Texas, and raised in Charleston, West Virginia, Garner studied theater at Denison University and began acting as an understudy for the Roundabout Theatre Company in New York City. She made her screen debut in the television film adaptation of Danielle Steel's romance novel Zoya in 1995. She had a starring role on the Fox teen drama series Time of Your Life (1999–2000), and supporting roles in the war drama film Pearl Harbor (2001) and the comedy-drama film Catch Me If You Can (2002).
Garner gained recognition for starring as CIA officer Sydney Bristow in the ABC action thriller series Alias (2001–2006), winning a Golden Globe Award and a SAG Award, in addition to four Primetime Emmy Award nominations. She also starred in the romantic comedy 13 Going on 30 (2004), and portrayed Elektra in the superhero films Daredevil (2003) and Elektra (2005). Other commercial successes include the romantic comedies Juno (2007), Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (2009), and Valentine's Day (2010).
Garner has since starred in several independent films, including the biographical drama Dallas Buyers Club (2013), and family comedies such as Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (2014), Love, Simon (2018), and Yes Day (2021). She also starred in the action films Peppermint (2018) and The Adam Project (2022), and in the Apple TV+ limited series The Last Thing He Told Me (2023).
Garner works as an activist for early childhood education and is a board member of Save the Children USA. She is the co-founder and chief brand officer of the organic baby food company Once Upon a Farm. She is also an advocate for anti-paparazzi campaigns among children of celebrities.
Early life
Jennifer Anne Garner was born on April 17, 1972, in Houston, Texas, but moved to Charleston, West Virginia at age three. Her father, William John Garner, worked as a chemical engineer for Union Carbide; her mother, Patricia Ann English, was a homemaker and later an English teacher at a local college. She has two sisters. Garner has described herself as a typical middle child who sought to differentiate herself from her accomplished older sister. While Garner did not grow up in a politically active household, her father was "very conservative" and her mother "quietly blue". She attended a local United Methodist Church every Sunday and went to Vacation Bible School. As teenagers, she and her sisters were not allowed to wear makeup, paint their nails, pierce their ears, or dye their hair; she has joked that her family's "take on the world" was "practically Amish".
She attended George Washington High School in Charleston. In 1990, Garner enrolled at Denison University in Granville, Ohio, where she changed her major from chemistry to theater and was a member of Pi Beta Phi sorority. She spent the fall semester of 1993 studying at the National Theater Institute at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Connecticut. During college summers, she worked summer stock theatre. In 1994, she graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in theater performance.
Acting career
1990s
As a college student, Garner performed in summer stock theatre. In addition to performing, Garner helped sell tickets, build sets, and clean the venues. She worked 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. Garner moved to New York City in 1995. During her first year in the city, Garner earned $150 per week as an understudy for a Roundabout Theatre Company production of A Month in the Country and made her first on-screen appearance as Melissa Gilbert's daughter in the romance miniseries Zoya. In 1996, she played an Amish woman in the television movie Harvest of Fire and a shopkeeper in the Western miniseries Dead Man's Walk. She appeared in the independent short film In Harm's Way and made one-off appearances in Spin City, and the legal dramas Swift Justice and Law & Order. Garner also supplemented her income by working as a hostess at a restaurant on the Upper West Side.