Jennifer Garner, born in Houston, Texas, and raised in Charleston, West Virginia, by her mother Patricia Ann (née English),a retired English teacher, and her father, Billy Jack Garner, a former chemical engineer, is the second of their three daughters.
She spent nine years of her adolescence studying ballet, characterizing her years in dance as consisting of determination rather than talent, driven mostly by a love of the stage.
Jennifer took this determination with her when she enrolled at Denison University as a chemistry major, later changing her major when she discovered that her passion for the stage was stronger than her love of science.
After college, she moved to New York, working as a hostess while pursuing a career in film and television, eventually relocating to Los Angeles, which led to a role on the television series Felicity (1998),where she met her future husband Scott Foley.
The couple divorced in 2004.
