Jennifer Garner



Jennifer Anne Garner (born April 17, 1972) is an American actress and film producer. Garner gained recognition on television for her performance as CIA agent Sydney Bristow in the thriller drama series Alias, which aired on ABC for five seasons from 2001 to 2006. For her work on the series, Garner won a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award.

While working on Alias, she gained minor roles in hit movies such as Pearl Harbor (2001), with her current husband Ben Affleck, and Catch Me if You Can (2002). Since then, Garner has appeared in supporting as well as lead roles on the big screen in projects including Daredevil (2003), 13 Going on 30 (2004), Elektra (2005), a spin-off of Daredevil, and Juno (2007). Garner has been married to actor and director Ben Affleck since 2005. The couple have two daughters and a son.

Early life
Garner was born in Houston, Texas. Her mother, Patricia Ann (née English), was an English teacher from Oklahoma, and her father, William John "Bill" Garner, worked as a chemical engineer. When she was four years old, her father's job with Union Carbide relocated her family to Princeton, West Virginia, and then later to Charleston, West Virginia, where Garner resided until her college years. She has credited her older sister, Melissa Lynn Garner Wylie, who resides in Boston, Massachusetts, as a source of inspiration to her. Her younger sister is Susannah Kay Garner Carpenter.

Garner's conservative upbringing included going to church every Sunday, not wearing make-up or a bikini, and waiting at least until the age of 16 to be allowed to get her ears pierced, which, she later joked, made her family "just a step away from being Amish." She said: "I'd hate to say it was strict. It was just not condoned. I never felt hemmed in." She began taking ballet lessons at the age of three and continued to dance throughout her youth, but she did not envision herself becoming a classical ballerina. Garner attended George Washington High School in Charleston and graduated in 1990. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in drama from Denison University, where she was initiated into the sorority Pi Beta Phi.

Garner did not plan on becoming an actress: "I wanted to be a doctor, a librarian. ... (Acting) wasn't possible to me. The more I learned what there was to learn about this field, the more hungry I became for it. It comes out of wanting to learn more, as opposed to 'I want to be a star.' I never felt that way," she said

[edit] Marriages and family
On October 19, 2000, Garner married actor Scott Foley, whom she had met on the set of Felicity in 1998. After separating from Foley in March 2003, Garner filed for divorce in May 2003, citing irreconcilable differences, and the two were officially divorced on March 30, 2004. Following her separation, Garner dated Alias co-star Michael Vartan from August 2003 to March 2004.

Sometime in early to mid 2004, Garner started dating Daredevil co-star Ben Affleck and the two made their first public appearance as a couple by attending the Boston Red Sox's opening World Series games in October 2004. Since her relationship with Affleck, first as girlfriend and then as wife, Garner has been a tabloid staple. "Ben taught me that you cannot read that stuff, that it's poison," she said in 2009. On Garner's 33rd birthday, Affleck proposed to her with a 4.5 carats (900 mg) diamond ring from Harry Winston. Affleck married Garner, who was four months pregnant at the time, on June 29, 2005 in a private ceremony in the Caribbean, officiated by family friend and Garner'sAlias co-star, Victor Garber, at the Parrot Cay resort on the Turks and Caicos Islands. The couple have three children: daughters Violet Anne Affleck (born December 1, 2005) and Seraphina Rose Elizabeth Affleck (born January 6, 2009), and son Samuel Garner Affleck (born February 27, 2012).

[edit] Stalking
Garner had been stalked since 2002 by a man, Steven Burky, who was eventually arrested in December 2009, after violating a 2008 restraining order. Burky was charged with two counts of stalking, to which he pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity; in March 2010, he was ruled insane and sent to the California state mental hospital with a court order to stay away from the Affleck family for 10 years if released from the hospital.