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Biography

Jennifer Anne Garner was born on April 17, 1972 in Houston, Texas, to a chemical engineer father and an English professor mother. She was the second of three daughters, all of whom were young when the family relocated to Charleston, West Virginia. The Garner household was a conservative one, wherein makeup and earrings were prohibited, making for a great discrepancy between the appearances of the young Jennifer and the older one that television audiences have come to know. As a child, Jennifer was an aspiring ballerina, practicing for up to six hours a day. Over the course of her youth, this passion for performance translated into an interest in acting and, after graduating from George Washington High School in Charleston, Jennifer enrolled in a theater program at Denison University in Granville, Ohio. 1998 found Garner cast as the female lead on the short-lived Fox drama Significant Others, and while the show only aired for a little over a month, Garner fared much better with a showy recurring role on Felicity, where she played Hannah, the former girlfriend of Noel Crane, played by Scott Foley. Though Garner claims she had to go through five rounds of auditions before she was given the role, she certainly made an impression on co-star Foley; they soon began dating, and were married in the fall of 2000. Garner's work on Felicity helped win her a major supporting role on the television series Time of Your Life, a spin-off of Party of Five starring Jennifer Love Hewitt. The heavily promoted series was a ratings disappointment, but Garner received enthusiastic notices, and began winning film roles in high-profile projects such as Pearl Harbor and Dude, Where's My Car?

In 2000, J.J. Abrams, who produced Felicity, was preparing a new series for ABC about a female spy living a triple life as a college student and supposed bank employee, who is also a double agent working for the CIA. Abrams remembered Garner's impressive performance as Hannah, and cast her as Sydney Bristow in Alias. The show quickly became a success when it premiered in 2001, earning respectable ratings, strong reviews, and a devoted fan following who tuned in each week to see Garner beat up bad guys and don an impressive collection of slinky outfits. That same year, Garner also appeared opposite her husband, Foley, in a supporting role in the independent drama Rennie's Landing.

Riding high on the success of Alias with a Golden Globe Award in hand, Garner continued to grow as a big-screen presence. After a memorable appearance in Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can, Garner displayed the butt-kicking skills she honed on Alias, appearing as Elektra in the 2003 comic-book adaptation Daredevil. The next year, she took on her first big-screen starring role, playing an adolescent girl who wakes up to suddenly find herself all grown up in the romantic comedy 13 Going on 30. Sadly, also in 2004, Garner and husband Foley's marriage proved to be short-lived when they announced that they were getting a divorce.

While continuing to star on Alias, Garner next geared up to star in her own Daredevil spin-off film, appropriately called Elektra. Unfortunately, when the movie was released in 2005 it bombed at the box office and was panned by critics, though many nonetheless complimented Garner's strong performance.