Jennifer Anne Affleck, more commonly known by her birth name, Jennifer Garner (born April 17, 1972), is an American actress. 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. While working on Alias, she gained minor roles in hit movies such as Pearl Harbor (2001) 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), also Garner starred in her first leading role in 13 Going on 30 (2004), a moderate commercial success. She played her role in Juno (2007). Garner made her Broadway debut on November 1, 2007, playing Roxanne in Cyrano de Bergerac alongside Kevin Kline at the Richard Rodgers Theatre on Broadway. Garner appeared in the hit ensemble romantic comedy Valentine's Day in 2010. Garner is the second of three daughters born into a middle class family in Houston, Texas. 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 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 the George Washington High School in Charleston. In 1990, she enrolled at Ohio's Denison University, where she majored in drama and worked in numerous theatrical productions. She graduated from Denison, where she was initiated into the sorority Pi Beta Phi, in 1994. She is the best known as an actress who had leading role in the thriller drama series Alias. The first few episodes of season one of Alias, which averaged about 10.2 million weekly viewers, earned Garner the award for "Best Actress in a Television Series — Drama" at the 2002 Golden Globe Awards. Garner's salary for the show began at $40,000 an episode and rose to $150,000 per episode by the series' end. During the show's run, Garner received four consecutive Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Drama nominations as well as Emmy nominations for her lead performance. She won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series in 2005. That same year, during the fourth season, Garner directed the Alias episode, "In Dreams", which aired in May. She received producer credit during the series' final season. T he series concluded in May 2006 after a shorter fifth season that was abbreviated from 22 to 17 episodes due to Garner's pregnancy, which was written into the season's storyline. She is married to actor and director Ben Affleck, with whom she has two daughters.
