Who are the parents of the 13 Going on 30 actress?
Jennifer Garner was born to her father, William John Garner, and her mother, Patricia Ann English. Her father worked as a chemical engineer and her mother was a stay-at-home mom, who later worked as an English professor at a community college.
Stick around to learn more about Jennifer Garner and her family.
The Garner Family’s View on Acting
Jennifer Garner was born on April 17, 1972, in Houston, Texas, but the family relocated to Charleston, West Virginia when Jennifer was a toddler.
Her father had a job at Union Carbide, where he worked as a chemical engineer. In fact, Jennifer almost followed in her father’s footsteps, initially studying chemistry at college before switching her degree to theatre performance.
Jennifer and her parents back in 2015:
Jennifer once explained how she got into film acting, saying, “I certainly never expected to be in front of a camera one day of my life.”
She continued, “Even when I was studying acting, I wouldn’t even go into the film department of my school. I was only about the stage. I didn’t even consider film or TV. I was a total snob.”
Jennifer graduated from Denison University in Granville, Ohio, in 1994. She then moved to New York to pursue a career on stage.
However, things didn’t exactly go to plan. She didn’t end up as a stage actress. Jennifer explained how she ended up on film and television, saying, “[I] was broke and got offered a TV movie. I was like, ‘Hot dog, put me in front of that camera!’”
The actress’s family was initially shocked at Jennifer’s decision to transfer to a theatre degree and get into acting. She explained how she made the decision to deviate from a career in chemistry, saying, “I just realized that I liked drama more than science.”
What was Jennifer Garner’s upbringing like?
Jennifer is the middle child of three sisters. The actress has talked about how her sisters influenced her life.
In 2015, talking to Southern Living, she said, “Being the middle child of these three girls is the relationship that defines me more than anything else. More than being my kid’s mother, more than being my husband’s wife, I’m first and foremost the middle Garner girl.”
The star also discussed how she felt she needed to differentiate herself from her older sister who had made the family proud of various accomplishments, and how this affected her ambitiousness as an adolescent.
She told the Independent, “If I’m totally honest, I wouldn’t be where I am today if it wasn’t for the fact that I have this bigger-than-life, incredible older sister.”
She continued, “She’s beautiful, and she was valedictorian, got 1600 on her SATs, and was the head majorette. I was just the middle kid, kind of looking for attention. So that’s what drove me, I think, to do things she wasn’t doing.”
Jennifer didn’t have a particularly politically active household, although she has mentioned that her father is “very conservative.” However, her mother is “quietly blue.”
The family also attended a United Methodist Church every Sunday and the children studied at a vacation bible school during the school summer break.
The family’s conservative ways meant that the three siblings were not allowed to paint their nails, pierce their ears, wear makeup, or dye their hair. She has also joked that her family’s ways were “practically Amish.”