Background and career
Jennifer Love Hewitt (born February 21, 1979) is an American actress, singer, producer and director. Hewitt began her career as a child, 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. After appearing in the film Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit (1993), she had a career breakthrough with the Fox teen drama Party of Five (1995–1999) and became known as a scream queen for her role as Julie James in the horror film I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) and two of its three sequels. Hewitt's other films include the comedies Can't Hardly Wait (1998), Heartbreakers (2001), The Tuxedo (2002), and the two Garfield live-action films (2004–2006). On television, she portrayed Melinda Gordon on the CBS supernatural drama Ghost Whisperer (2005–2010), and has starred on the Lifetime drama series The Client List (2012–2013), the CBS crime drama Criminal Minds (2014–2015), and the Fox/ABC first-responder procedural 9-1-1 (2018–present). 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: Love Songs (1992), Let's Go Bang (1995), Jennifer Love Hewitt (1996) and BareNaked (2002), the lattermost became a moderate chart success on the Billboard 200. 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 the annual Celebrity 100 list by Forbes in 2008 and her 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 to pursue a career in both acting and singing, at the suggestion of talent scouts. 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. Hewitt became a film star with the release of the horror film I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), portraying Julie James, the final girl. She was cast in the role based on her "ability to project vulnerability," which the producers, director Jim Gillespie, and writer Kevin Williamson unanimously agreed upon. While the film received mixed reviews, an Entertainment Weekly columnist praised Hewitt's performance, noting that she knows how to "scream with soul". Budgeted at US $17 million, the movie made US $125 million globally. For her role, she received a Young Artist Award nomination for Best Performance in a Feature Film — Leading Young Actress and the Blockbuster Entertainment Award for Favorite Female Newcomer. She appeared in the sequel I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998), which, though not as successful as the first film, took in more money on its opening weekend. Hewitt starred as Amanda Beckett, the most popular girl in school and the senior class prom queen, in the teen comedy Can't Hardly Wait (1998). Critic James Berardinelli asserted that Hewitt was "so likable that it's hard not to have at least a minor rooting interest" in her character, and with a US $25.6 million gross at the North American domestic box office, the film emerged as a moderate commercial success. Telling You, another 1998 teen comedy, featured Hewitt as the annoyingly sweet ex-girlfriend of a college student working in a pizza joint. In 1999, she played a record company executive in the independent comedy The Suburbans and starred in and produced Time of Your Life, a Party of Five spin-off following her character as she moved to New York City to learn more about her biological parents. Despite Hewitt's popularity at the time, the show received a lackluster viewership and was cancelled after only half the season had aired.
In The Audrey Hepburn Story (2000), a biographical drama television film based on the life of actress and humanitarian Audrey Hepburn, Hewitt starred as the title role and served as an executive producer. She had been recommended for the role by director Steven Robman, who had previously directed her in Party of Five. The production aired as a three-hour film on ABC on March 27, 2000, and drew mixed reviews. Entertainment Weekly wrote that Hewitt had "guts" to take on the role and called her "excellent at conveying Hepburn's studied modesty", while The Baltimore Sun review stated: "What's impossibly wrong with this film is that Hewitt has no physical grace while Hepburn was the very embodiment of it". Hewitt starred alongside Sigourney Weaver in the romantic comedy Heartbreakers (2001), playing a mother–daughter team setting up an elaborate con to swindle wealthy men out of their money. Roger Ebert noted that Hewitt "spends the entire film with her treasures on display, maybe as product placement for the Wonderbra", while BBC.com asserted: "Hewitt though, lacks the necessary duplicity for her character and is too patently agreeable to bitch convincingly, ultimately reducing her to eye-candy among the professionals. Still, she has the right cleavage for the role, and there's sure to be legions of men thankful for that alone". The film made a moderate US $57.7 million globally. Hewitt starred as a genius scientist with aspirations of field work, alongside Jackie Chan, in the action comedy The Tuxedo (2002). Robert Koehler of Variety noted that Hewitt "has displayed a Chan-like sweetness herself in past roles" and was disappointed that her character is "a haggling, high-strung shrew who's instantly repellent" rather than an amusing sidekick as Chan has had in other Hollywood films. The film made US $104.4 million worldwide. In 2002, she also lent her voice for two direct-to-DVD animated films—The Hunchback of Notre Dame II and The Adventures of Tom Thumb and Thumbelina. In 2004, Hewitt starred as a musician in the romantic fantasy drama If Only, the love interest of Ebenezer Scrooge in the television film A Christmas Carol, and Dr. Liz Wilson in the live-action comedy Garfield. With a worldwide gross of US $200 million, Garfield became Hewitt's highest-grossing film to date.
Hewitt portrayed Melinda Gordon, a woman with the ability to see and communicate with ghosts, on the CBS television series Ghost Whisperer, which ran on CBS for five seasons and 107 episodes, from September 23, 2005, to May 21, 2010. She also served as a producer and directed three episodes, including the 100th episode. In his review for the first season, David Bianculli, of New York Daily News, wrote: "If [television] really wants a success built around this actress, someone in Hollywood should pay attention to her chameleonic and comedic role in Heartbreakers, and give her a role that plays to those strengths, instead of something this translucent". Nevertheless, the series emerged as a ratings success and earned Hewitt two Saturn Awards for Best Television Actress. In 2005, she played a happily married English woman in the romantic comedy The Truth About Love, and a 28-year-old advertising executive more concerned with being a well-known socialite than being a good person in the television film Confessions of a Sociopathic Social Climber. Hewitt reprised her role as Dr. Liz Wilson for Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties (2006), which, though it did not perform as well as its predecessor, achieved a strong box office gross. Her next film release was the comedy Shortcut to Happiness, in which she starred as The Devil, opposite Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin. Filmed in New York City in early 2001, the film became an asset in a federal bank fraud trial when investor Jed Barron was convicted of bank fraud while the film was in production. The film was eventually acquired by The Yari Group and was finally released in 2007. In 2008, she made a cameo appearance in the successful action comedy Tropic Thunder, and reunited with Freddie Prinze Jr. in the animated production Delgo, which was a massive box office bomb, taking in US $694,782 in North America. In 2010, Hewitt portrayed a good-hearted barista in the independent drama Café, and a struggling prostitute in the Lifetime film The Client List. While a reviewer felt that Hewitt did "a surprisingly credible job of acting seen-it-all exasperated and emotionally mature without once going giggly-girly" in Café, Entertainment Weekly's Ken Tucker felt that the actress was able to sell The Client List to the audiences due to her "talent for communicating sincerity and charm". She received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress – Miniseries or Television Film for the latter.
