Jennifer Love Hewitt (born February 21, 1979) is an American actress, singer, producer, and director. Hewitt began her career as a child actress and singer, appearing in national television commercials before joining the cast of the Disney Channel series Kids Incorporated (1989–1991), which won her a Young Artist Award in 1994. She had her breakthrough as Sarah Reeves Merrin on the Fox teen drama Party of Five (1995–1999) and rose to fame as a teen star and "scream queen" for her role as Julie James in the horror film I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), a role she reprised in the sequels I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998) and I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025).

Hewitt's other films include the teen comedy Can't Hardly Wait (1998), as Amanda Beckett, as well as Heartbreakers (2001), The Tuxedo (2002), and the two Garfield live-action films (2004–2006). She has starred as Melinda Gordon on the CBS supernatural drama Ghost Whisperer (2005–2010), Riley Parks on the Lifetime drama series The Client List (2012–2013), Special Agent Kate Callahan on the CBS crime drama Criminal Minds (2014–2015), and since 2018, Maddie Buckley on the Fox/ABC first-responder procedural 9-1-1. She was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Miniseries or Television Film for The Client List pilot film (2010).

In music, Hewitt has released four studio albums. After her debut album, Love Songs (1992), was released at age 12 in Japan, she recorded Let's Go Bang (1995), Jennifer Love Hewitt (1996) and BareNaked (2002), the lattermost of which became her first album to chart in the United States, peaking at number 37 on the Billboard 200 chart. Her most successful single on the Billboard Hot 100 chart was the 1999 release "How Do I Deal", which peaked at number 59. In addition to music and acting, Hewitt has served as a producer on some of her film and television projects. She appeared on Forbes' annual Celebrity 100 list in 2008 and her 2010 dating-advice book The Day I Shot Cupid (2010), topped The New York Times Best Seller list. Labeled a sex symbol, she has appeared in several magazines' lists of the world's most beautiful women.

Hewitt was born in Waco, Texas to Patricia Mae (née Shipp), a speech-language pathologist, and Herbert Daniel Hewitt, a medical technician. She grew up in Nolanville in Central Texas, and has close kinship ties in parts of Arkansas. After their parents divorced, Hewitt and her older brother Todd were raised by their mother.

As a toddler, Hewitt was attracted to music, which led to her first encounters with the entertainment industry. At age three, she sang "The Greatest Love of All" at a livestock show. The following year, at a restaurant-dance hall, she entertained an audience with her version of "Help Me Make It Through the Night". By age five, she practiced tap dancing and ballet. At nine, she became a member of the Texas Show Team, an L.A. Gear troupe, which also toured the Soviet Union.

Hewitt moved to Los Angeles, at age ten, with her mother, to pursue a career in both acting and singing, at the suggestion of talent scouts, and after winning the title of "Texas Our Little Miss Talent Winner". She attended Lincoln High School where her classmates included Jonathan Neville, who became a talent scout and recommended Hewitt for her role in Party of Five.

Hewitt appeared in more than twenty television commercials, including some for Mattel toys. Her first break came as a child actress on the Disney Channel variety show Kids Incorporated (1989–1991), which earned her, as a member of the cast, three Young Artist Award nominations. In 1992, she appeared in the live-action short Dance! Workout with Barbie (1992), which was released by Buena Vista, and obtained her first feature film role in the independent production Munchie, in which she played Andrea, the love interest of a bullied young boy. A year later, she had her first starring role in Little Miss Millions, as a wealthy nine-year old who runs away from her stepmother to find her real mother, and appeared as a choir member in Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit. Hewitt played Pierce Brosnan's daughter in a pilot for NBC called Running Wilde (1993), which featured Brosnan as a reporter for Auto World magazine, whose stories cover his own wild auto adventures. The series was not picked up and the pilot never aired. Hewitt later had roles in several short-lived television series, such as Fox's Shaky Ground (1992–1993), ABC's The Byrds of Paradise (1994), and McKenna (1994–95).

Hewitt rose to teen idol status after landing the role of Sarah Reeves Merrin on the popular Fox show Party of Five (1995–99). Originally cast for a nine-episode arc in season two, reception from producers and audiences was so positive that she became a series regular, continuing to play the character until the show's sixth and final season. Co-creator Amy Lippman once stated: "She was a crazy professional. You didn't have to ask yourself, ‘I don't know if she'll be able to work up a head of steam here, I don't know if she'll be able to cry.' She wasn't running to her trailer [between takes] to smoke cigarettes or play with a toy poodle. She was reading material and trying to plot her career". For her performance, Hewitt garnered nominations for a Kids' Choice Award, a Teen Choice Award and a YoungStar Award.^{[citation needed]}