Jennifer Garner - 80th Annual Academy Awards

Jennifer Garner Profile

Name: Jennifer Garner

Birth Name: Jennifer Anne Garner

Height: 5' 9"

Sex: F

Nationality: American

Birth Date: April 17, 1972

Birth Place: Houston, Texas, USA

Profession: actress

Education: George Washington High School in Charleston, WV
Denison University in Granville, OH.

Husband/Wife: Ben Affleck (actor; born on August 15, 1972; began dating in 2004; married on June 29, 2005 at the Parrot Cay resort in the Caribbean Islands), Scott Foley (actor; born on July 15, 1972; married on October 19, 2000; divorced on March 30, 2004)

Relationship: Michael Vartan (actor; born on November 27, 1968; costar on Alias; quietly dated 2003-2004 and were rarely seen in public)

Father: William John Garner (a former chemical engineer)

Mother: Patricia Ann English (a retired English teacher)

Sister: Melissa Garner Wiley (older), Susannah Garner Carpenter (younger)

Daughter: Violet Anne(born on December 1, 2005 at 6:26 in Los Angeles, California, father: Ben Affleck)

Claim to fame: as CIA agent Sydney Bristow on Alias

Jennifer Garner Biography

Jennifer Anne Garner (born April 17, 1972) is an Emmy-nominated and Golden Globe- and SAG Award-winning American actress. She is best known for her role as CIA agent Sydney Bristow on TV's Alias. In December 2007, Garner was named The Charleston Sunday Gazette-Mail's 2007 West Virginian of the Year "for her dedication, work ethic and unique role as role model and ambassador for West Virginia."

Garner was born in Houston, Texas, the daughter of Patricia Ann (née English), an English teacher from Oklahoma, and Billy Jack Garner, a chemical engineer who worked for Union Carbide in Texas. She is the middle child between two sisters, Melissa Garner Wylie (born 1969, resides in Boston, Massachusetts) and Susannah Kay Garner Carpenter (born January 24, 1975 in Texas, resides in Charleston, West Virginia). Her family is Methodist. At three years old, Garner began taking ballet lessons which she continued throughout her youth. Although she admitted that she loved dancing, she never had ambitions to become a classical ballerina. When she was four years old, her father's job with Union Carbide relocated her family to Princeton, West Virginia, then to Charleston, West Virginia, where Garner resided until her college years.

In 1990, Garner graduated from George Washington High School in Charleston, where she played the saxophone. She then enrolled at Denison University to study chemistry. Upon realizing that she enjoyed stage acting more than science, Garner changed her major to drama. While at Denison, Garner was initiated into the sorority Pi Beta Phi. Garner graduated from Denison in 1994 and continued her drama education at the National Theater Institute where she was trained by fight choreographer David Chandler, and told she was a natural in stage combat. Keen for immediate experience, she visited her friend, Clayton Kirlew, in New York City in 1995 and decided to take her chances in New York theatre.

In New York City, Garner earned $150 a week as an understudy in a play. She was then cast in her first television role, a part in the made-for-television movie, Zoya, based on the Danielle Steel novel. Her next acting jobs were in two short-lived television series, Significant Others and Time of Your Life, and a recurring role in the series Felicity. Garner appeared in the comedy Dude, Where's My Car?, playing Ashton Kutcher's girlfriend. In 2001, she appeared as a nurse in the big-budget epic Pearl Harbor, co-starring with Kate Beckinsale and Garner's future husband Ben Affleck.