Jennifer Garner

Garner married actor Scott Foley in October 2000 after meeting on the set of Felicity. They separated in 2003 and divorced the following year. In June 2005, she married actor Ben Affleck in a private Turks and Caicos ceremony officiated by their friend Victor Garber. The couple had three children: Violet, Seraphina, and Samuel. They announced their separation in 2015 and finalized their divorce in 2018. Garner later entered a relationship with businessman John C. Miller.

Intense media scrutiny around her family spurred Garner to take political action. Photographers routinely staked out her home and followed her children. In August 2013, she testified before the California Assembly Judiciary Committee alongside Halle Berry. She argued for stricter legal protections against aggressive photographers targeting minors. The bill passed into law that September.

Garner was born in Houston, Texas, and moved to Charleston, West Virginia, at age three. Her father worked as a chemical engineer and her mother taught college English. She grew up with two sisters in a strict, churchgoing household. Ballet consumed nine years of her youth.

She entered Denison University in 1990 intending to study chemistry. The stage pulled harder. Garner switched her major to theater performance and graduated in 1994. During college summers, she worked in summer stock theater, cleaning auditoriums, building sets, and acting on stage.

After moving to New York City in 1995, Garner worked as a restaurant hostess and babysat for Stephen Colbert's family. Her first professional acting job in the city was an understudy role for the Roundabout Theatre Company production of A Month in the Country. Screen credits soon followed, including the 1995 miniseries Zoya and guest spots on Law & Order and Spin City.

In 1998, Garner earned a recurring part on the college drama Felicity. Series creator J. J. Abrams wrote the lead role of secret agent Sydney Bristow in the ABC thriller Alias specifically for her. The series premiered in 2001 and ran for five seasons. For her performance, Garner won a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award, alongside four consecutive Primetime Emmy nominations.

Physical training for Alias opened doors to action cinema. She starred as Elektra Natchios opposite Ben Affleck in Daredevil (2003), later reprising the character in the 2005 solo spin-off Elektra and the 2024 film Deadpool & Wolverine. In 2004, she starred in the romantic comedy 13 Going on 30, playing a teenager transported into adulthood. The film grossed $96 million worldwide.

Garner moved between major studio releases and independent projects throughout the late 2000s and 2010s. In 2007, she played an adoptive mother in Jason Reitman's comedy-drama Juno and made her Broadway debut as Roxane in Cyrano de Bergerac opposite Kevin Kline. She appeared in the romantic comedies Ghosts of Girlfriends Past and Valentine's Day, then played an AIDS physician in the 2013 drama Dallas Buyers Club.

She also expanded into producing. In 2011, she produced and starred in the satirical comedy Butter. She headlined the 2018 action-revenge thriller Peppermint and played the mother in the teen comedy-drama Love, Simon. In the 2020s, she starred in and produced Netflix comedies including Yes Day (2021) and Family Switch (2023), reunited with Mark Ruffalo in The Adam Project (2022), and executive produced the Apple TV+ mystery series The Last Thing He Told Me.

Beyond acting, Garner works in early childhood advocacy. She joined Save the Children as an artist ambassador in 2009 and joined its board of trustees in 2014. Her field visits focus on literacy and early education programs for families in rural America.

In 2018, Garner and John Foraker co-founded Once Upon a Farm, an organic fresh baby food company where she serves as chief brand officer. The company created the first refrigerated baby food approved for WIC-eligible families and partnered with Save the Children on food security initiatives. Garner is also part of the ownership group for the National Women's Soccer League team Angel City FC.