Jennifer Anne Garner (born April 17, 1972) is an American actress. Born in Houston, Texas and raised in Charleston, West Virginia, Garner studied theater at Denison University and began acting as an understudy for the Roundabout Theatre Company in New York City. She had a starring role on the Fox teen drama series Time of Your Life (1999–2000), and supporting roles in the films Pearl Harbor (2001) and Catch Me If You Can (2002).

Garner rose to fame in the early 2000s for playing the secret agent Sydney Bristow in the ABC action thriller series Alias (2001–2006), for which she earned a Golden Globe, and four Primetime Emmy Award nominations, among other honors. She received further recognition for her starring roles in the romantic comedies 13 Going on 30 (2004), Juno (2007), Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (2009) and Valentine's Day (2010), and for playing Elektra in superhero films. Garner has since starred in the films Dallas Buyers Club (2013); Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (2014); Love, Simon (2018); Peppermint (2018); Yes Day (2021); and The Adam Project (2022). She starred in the Apple TV+ drama series The Last Thing He Told Me (2023).

Aside from acting, Garner works as an advocate for early childhood education and serves on the board of Save the Children USA. She is also the co-founder and chief brand officer of Once Upon a Farm, an organic baby food company. Additionally, Garner is a vocal advocate for anti-paparazzi campaigns aimed at protecting the children of celebrities.

Jennifer Anne Garner was born on April 17, 1972, in Houston, Texas and moved to Charleston, West Virginia at age three. Her father, William John Garner, received his undergraduate and graduate degree in chemical engineering from Texas A&M University and worked as a chemical engineer for Union Carbide; her mother, Patricia Ann English, was a homemaker and later an English teacher at a local college. She has two sisters. Garner has described herself as a typical middle child who sought to differentiate herself from her accomplished older sister. While Garner did not grow up in a politically active household, her father was "very conservative" and her mother "quietly blue". She attended a local United Methodist Church every Sunday and went to Vacation Bible School. As teenagers, she and her sisters were not allowed to wear makeup, paint their nails, pierce their ears, or dye their hair; she has joked that her family's "take on the world" was "practically Amish".

She attended George Washington High School in Charleston. In 1990, Garner enrolled at Denison University in Granville, Ohio, where she changed her major from chemistry to theater and was a member of the sorority Pi Beta Phi. She spent the fall semester of 1993 studying at the National Theater Institute at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Connecticut. During college summers, she worked summer stock theatre. In 1994, she graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in theater performance.

As a college student, Garner performed in summer stock theatre. In addition to performing, Garner helped sell tickets, build sets, and clean the venues. She worked at the Timber Lake Playhouse in Mount Carroll, Illinois, in 1992, the Barn Theatre in Augusta, Michigan, in 1993, and the Georgia Shakespeare Festival in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1994. Garner moved to New York City in 1995. During her first year in the city, Garner earned $150 per week as an understudy for a Roundabout Theatre Company production of A Month in the Country and made her first on-screen appearance as Melissa Gilbert's daughter in the romance miniseries Zoya. In 1996, she played an Amish woman in the television movie Harvest of Fire and a shopkeeper in the Western miniseries Dead Man's Walk. She appeared in the independent short film In Harm's Way and made one-off appearances in Spin City, and the legal dramas Swift Justice and Law & Order. Garner also supplemented her income by working as a hostess at a restaurant on the Upper West Side, as well as by doing some babysitting, specifically watching Madeleine Colbert, the daughter of Stephen and Evie Colbert.

After moving to Los Angeles in 1997, Garner gained her first leading role in the television film Rose Hill and made her first feature film appearance in the period drama Washington Square. She appeared in the comedy film Mr. Magoo, the independent drama 1999 and Woody Allen's Deconstructing Harry, though most of her performance was cut from the film. In 1998, Garner appeared in an episode of Fantasy Island and was cast as a series regular in the Fox drama Significant Others, but Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly thought there was "no center" to the character as played by Garner. Fox canceled the series after airing three of six filmed episodes. Garner's most significant role of 1998 was in J. J. Abrams' college drama series Felicity. In 1999, Garner was cast as a series regular in another Fox drama series, Time of Your Life, but it was canceled midway through the first season. Also in 1999, she appeared in the miniseries Aftershock: Earthquake in New York and in two episodes of the action drama series The Pretender.

Garner played the girlfriend of Ashton Kutcher's character in the comedy Dude, Where's My Car? (2000). In 2001, she appeared briefly opposite her husband Scott Foley in the drama Stealing Time and had a small role as a nurse in the war epic Pearl Harbor. Also in 2001, Garner was cast as the star of the ABC action thriller series Alias. The show's creator, J. J. Abrams, wrote the part of Sydney Bristow with Garner in mind. Alias aired for five seasons from 2001 to 2006; Garner's salary began at $40,000 per episode and rose to $150,000 per episode by the series' end. During the show's run, Garner received the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Drama (from four nominations) and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series (from two nominations), in addition to four nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series.