Best Known As: Film Actor,  Television Actor

Gist:  Jennifer Anne Affleck (born April 17, 1972), known professionally as Jennifer Garner, is an American actress. She is best known for her role as CIA agent Sydney Bristow on the TV show Alias; as well as for her roles in the films Juno, Pearl Harbor, Dude, Where's My Car?, 13 Going on 30, Catch Me if You Can, Daredevil, Elektra, Catch and Release, and The Kingdom.

Life Facts:  Garner played Roxanne in Cyrano de Bergerac at the Richard Rodgers Theatre on Broadway from November 1, 2007 alongside Kevin Kline who was in the title role. This was her Broadway debut.

Cyrano de Bergerac, originally set to run until December 23, 2007, was extended through January 6, 2008 due to the Broadway stagehand strike in late 2007. For this role Garner won the 9th Annual broadway.com Audience Award for Favorite Actress in a Play.

Garner enjoys cooking, gardening, hiking and kickboxing (a hobby picked up during training for her Alias character). She is close friends with Reese Witherspoon and also close to actress Jean Louisa Kelly, who interviewed Garner for the June 2005 issue of Self magazine.

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."

She has a yellow Labrador Retriever named "Martha Stewart" (after the television personality of the same name), which appeared with her on the television show Martha on January 24, 2007.

Garner is known for being private about her personal life. This is reflected in her relationships with Michael Vartan and Ben Affleck. Over the course of her relationship with her Alias co-star Michael Vartan, she never made any public appearances with him and was late to confirm their relationship in August 2003. Garner began dating Vartan in mid-2003, and though rumors of their break-up began in March 2004, Garner only confirmed the end of their relationship in August 2004.

While growing up, Garner and her sisters had to abide by a number of rules laid down by their parents that set the three girls apart from their peers. For example, they were not allowed to wear make-up or go to the movies, they couldn't wear the latest fashions in clothes, they had to attend church every Sunday, and had to wait until at least the age of sixteen before they would be allowed to have their ears pierced. Speaking in interviews about these rules, Garner later said "I sometimes joke that we were just a step away from being Amish." More recently, she has admitted that, while they did follow the rules to some extent, they also broke them too, such as the time when Susannah had her ears pierced without parental permission at the age of fourteen. Garner herself didn't have her ears pierced until she appeared in the made-for-television disaster movie, Aftershock: Earthquake in New York, and agreed to have her ears pierced temporarily especially for that role, letting them heal up again once filming was completed.

As of early 2009, Garner continues to dress conservatively in her private life, in complete contrast to many other celebrities, and is perfectly happy to be seen out and about in quite plain and practical clothes. This has led to her being criticized by a number of celebrity gossip websites, while others see her as the perfect counter to certain other high-profile celebrities who will only be seen in public wearing nothing but major designer labels.

In late January 2009, shortly after the birth of her second child, Garner and her older sister, Melissa, both had their ears pierced during a visit to a medical center in Santa Monica, California.

* 2009-04-29 - The Late Show with David Letterman - promoting The Ghosts of Girlfriends Past - appeared with skin off her right knee, elbow, and wrist, and a bruise on her left knee; David Letterman applied an ointment and rubbed it on her injuries. No explanation for the injuries was given, except Garner mentioned that her older daughter had mentioned it just after the accident; Garner commented that she had replied, "... I went down hard." Letterman was suitably and visibly embarrassed.

Career Facts:  In New York City, Garner earned $300 a week as an understudy in the play A Month in the Country for Roundabout Theatre Company in 1995. She was then cast in her first television role, a part in the made-for-television movie Zoya, based on the Danielle Steel novel. In 1996 she appeared in an episode of Spin City as the character James' high school sweetheart and in an episode of Law & Order as a temporary love interest of Benjamin Bratt. 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 future husband Ben Affleck.

Later in 2001, J. J. Abrams (who produced Felicity) approached Garner about starring in a new show he was working on for ABC. Garner auditioned for and was cast in the role of Sydney Bristow in the spy drama Alias. The series became a success and Garner won the award for "Best Actress in a Television Series - Drama" at the January 2002 Golden Globes. Alias had just begun a few months beforehand, and Garner won the award with only half the season's episodes aired. The series was successful, concluding in May 2006 after a fifth, abbreviated season (due to Garner's pregnancy, a development that was written into the storyline of the fifth season). Garner's salary for the show began at $45,000 an episode, rising to $150,000 per episode by the series' end. During the show's run, Garner received four consecutive Golden Globe nominations for her lead performance. She also received four consecutive Emmy nominations for "Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series." Garner won the "Actor Award" from the Screen Actors Guild in 2005. In March 2005, Garner directed the fourth-season Alias episode, "In Dreams", which aired in May. Garner received producer credit during the series' final season.

After the initial success of Alias, Garner returned to her film career with a small role in the Steven Spielberg film Catch Me if You Can, and starred alongside Ben Affleck as Elektra Natchios in the action movie Daredevil, an adaptation of the comic book. She showed her comedic side in 2004's 13 Going on 30, a romantic comedy whose commercial success established her as a leading feature film actress, and reprised her role as "Elektra" in the 2005 spin-off to Daredevil titled Elektra. Garner is known for performing her own stunts and in January 2005 was forced to bow out of some publicity duties for Elektra because of what was first thought to have been a viral infection, but was revealed to be the effects of nerve damage to her back caused by a stunt during the filming of the fourth season of Alias.

Catch and Release, a romantic comedy, opened on January 26, 2007. Garner has formed a production company named Vandalia Films which will produce its first film in 2007. She will produce the company's upcoming films Sabbatical and Be with You. Garner took her first role as part of an ensemble in The Kingdom alongside Jamie Foxx, Jason Bateman and Ashraf Barhom. Box office analysts have commented that the choice was a smart move on Garner's part, as her other projects with her as the sole lead are risky gambles. Garner was set to star in Zach Braff's directorial feature of Open Hearts but backed out of the project so she could spend more time with her family.

Garner appeared in the Jason Reitman-directed comedy/drama feature Juno. After that film's premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, Entertainment Weekly declared Garner's role the best female supporting performance of the festival, saying "The star of Alias and The Kingdom does no butt-kicking in this sweet comedy. Instead, as a young wife desperately hoping to adopt, she's funny, a bit tough, and unbelievably touching."

In 2008, Garner appeared as a presenter at the Oscars. However, for Garner, this part of the evening was somewhat overshadowed in the next day's press by discussions of the unexpected interruption of her Red Carpet interview by Gary Busey. Busey later publicly apologized for the incident, saying that he merely wanted to congratulate Laura Linney, who was being interviewed along with Garner, and didn't realise that they were being interviewed at the time. Later in the year, she began filming of two 2009 movies, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past and The Invention of Lying.

While growing up, Garner and her sisters had to abide by a number of rules laid down by their parents that set the three girls apart from their peers. For example, they were not allowed to wear make-up or go to the movies, they couldn't wear the latest fashions in clothes, they had to attend church every Sunday, and had to wait until at least the age of sixteen before they would be allowed to have their ears pierced. Speaking in interviews about these rules, Garner later said "I sometimes joke that we were just a step away from being Amish." More recently, she has admitted that, while they did follow the rules to some extent, they also broke them too, such as the time when Susannah had her ears pierced without parental permission at the age of fourteen. Garner herself didn't have her ears pierced until she appeared in the made-for-television disaster movie, Aftershock: Earthquake in New York, and agreed to have her ears pierced temporarily especially for that role, letting them heal up again once filming was completed.