Jenna Fischer Biography

Regina Marie "Jenna" Fischer (born March 7, 1974) is an American actress and director. She is known for her Emmy-nominated portrayal of Pam Halpert (née Beesly) on the NBC situation comedy The Office. She has also appeared in several films, including Blades of Glory, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, The Promotion, and Hall Pass.

Early life

Fischer was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and was raised in suburban St. Louis, Missouri. Her mother, Anne (née Miller), is a history teacher, and her father, James E. "Jim" Fischer, is a plastics engineer. Fischer has one younger sister, Emily, a third grade teacher. Fischer first performed at the age of six, when she participated in an acting workshop taught by her mother at Henry School in St. Louis, a workshop also attended by actor Sean Gunn, with whom she grew up.

Fischer attended Pierremont Elementary School in Manchester, Missouri, and Nerinx Hall High School, a private all-girls Catholic school, in Webster Groves, Missouri. She holds a bachelor of arts in theatre, as well as a minor in journalism, from Truman State University, where she originally enrolled as a pre-law history major.

Career

Career development

Fischer first began her career working in professional theatre. While attending college in Missouri, she performed with a touring Murder Mystery Dinner Theatre group and, upon her move to Los Angeles, began performing Commedia dell'arte with the Zoo District Theatre. Her performance in the company's musical adaptation of the film Nosferatu led to her first agent. However, she struggled to break into film and television, telling NPR that her first paying film job was a "sex education video for [psychiatric] patients upon their release from UCLA Medical Center". In a Myspace blog written specifically to advise actors beginning their own career, she explained that it took three years before landing her first televised speaking role, a part on Spin City.

She continued to spend the next few years of her career appearing in bit parts in small indie films, such as Employee of the Month, Lucky 13, and The Specials, as well as guest spots on the television shows Six Feet Under, That '70s Show, Cold Case, Miss Match, Strong Medicine, Undeclared, What I Like About You, and Off Centre.

Fischer appeared in friend Peter Alton's 2002 short subject film Les Superficiales. Fischer met Alton at the Zoo District Theatre group, and he later co-wrote and narrated her self-produced film, Lollilove. In 2003, she held a starring role in The Girl's Guide to Summer, a 2003 Instant Films short (a competition similar to the nationally held 48 Hour Film Project, only based in Los Angeles) directed by Instant Film's co-founder (and camera operator) Charles Papert.

Lollilove

While her film career was slowly taking off, Fischer took matters into her own hands, writing, producing, directing and starring in her own mockumentary, LolliLove. The film co-starred her now ex-husband James Gunn, as well as friends Linda Cardellini, Judy Greer, Lloyd Kaufman and Jason Segel. "I wasn't working much, getting little guest-star roles months away from each other," Fischer explained in 2006. She began participating in The Artist's Way, a self-led creativity seminar in book form. "From doing that book I got this idea... When we started it, it wasn't even supposed to be a real movie. It was just going to be an improv project for James and I to amuse ourselves with." Utilizing a camera she gave Gunn as a wedding present, she filmed preliminary improvisational interviews with her friends in the faux documentary format that would later bring her fame on The Office. "I really feel it was divine intervention that I chose to work in this medium for a year," she said in an interview. "It was the best practice I could have ever gotten for the possibility of being on the show."

Lollilove premiered at the St. Louis International Film Festival, the hometown of Fischer and Gunn, in November 2004, and was also shown at the TromaDance Film Festival. For her role in the film, Fischer was awarded a Screen Actors Guild Emerging Actor Award. Despite the film's contribution to her career, she admitted to a St. Louis arts and entertainment magazine that the experience dissuaded her from any future directing:

The Office and feature films

In 2005, after a succession of mostly improvised auditions similar to her Lollilove experience, Fischer landed the role of Pam Beesly on what would become the NBC hit, The Office, based on the original BBC series. Before her initial audition, casting director Allison Jones advised Fischer, "Dare to bore me." Fischer herself spent several years working as a receptionist and administrative assistant in Los Angeles offices, much like her television counterpart, while struggling to achieve success, and thus felt she was well-suited to the role. "I'm so attached to Pam's journey," she told NPR in 2009. "I just love playing this character so, so much." She received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination in 2007.

Soon after The Office premiered, Fischer was focused on the show's success; in an April 2005 interview with her alma maters student newspaper, she said: "Honestly it would be great to get to play Pam for a long, long time .... I don't have real big aspirations to be a movie star. I would love to be on a long-running hit TV show. You end up playing a defining role." As The Office grew into a success, Fischer's film acting career became more established. In 2006, she co-starred in her then-husband's film, Slither, and in 2007, she filmed supporting roles in The Brothers Solomon, with Will Arnett and Will Forte, Blades of Glory, with Will Ferrell, John Heder, and Amy Poehler, and Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, alongside John C. Reilly, with whom she co-starred again in 2008's The Promotion, also starring Seann William Scott.

In 2009, Fischer completed filming on the movies Solitary Man, and the indie A Little Help, which opened in the summer of 2010 at the Seattle International Film Festival. Also that summer, she completed filming on the Farrelly Brothers comedy Hall Pass, which was released in February 2011.

Other work

Fischer appeared on Bravo's Celebrity Poker Showdown in 2006, participating in the show's eighth tournament, shot in New Orleans, Louisiana, and playing for Catholic Charities' Tsunami Relief.

In 2007 Fischer starred in the music video for Willie Wisely's single "Through Any Window", directed by longtime friend John Cabrera; the opportunity arose because she knew Wisely from work he had done on soundtracks for LolliLove and Tromeo and Juliet, one of her husband's films.

In December of the same year, during the Hollywood writer's strike, Fischer appeared at Sacred Fools Theater Company in episode 25 of Darque Magick, a serialized play written and directed by Jenelle Riley.

In July 2009, Fischer played left field for the National League team in the Taco Bell All-Star Legends and Celebrity Softball Game as part of the MLB All-Star Week festivities, held at Busch Stadium in St. Louis, Missouri, where she grew up. In March 2010, she returned to the area to co-chair an annual auction for Nerinx Hall High School, her alma mater. At the event, she auctioned off a set visit to The Office and multiple autographed props from the show.

Fischer was named an official spokeswoman for Proactiv Skincare Solutions in 2009, and was announced as the voice behind the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board Grilled Cheese Academy website in 2010.

Fischer was named as producer of the mid-August through October 2010 run of the critically acclaimed play Sad Happy Sucker, written by her husband Lee Kirk and directed by friend Sean Gunn. The play previously ran as a theatre workshop in February and March 2007.

After finishing The Office, Fischer starred in the Off-Broadway play Reasons to Be Happy, written and directed by Neil LaBute, which ran from May to June 2013.

Personal life

Fischer met screenwriter James Gunn, her first husband, after she graduated from Truman State and moved to Los Angeles; her childhood friend Sean Gunn, James' brother, introduced them after he helped her get a part in a showcase. That small part in a showcase also led to her getting her first manager. On October 7, 2000, Fischer married James Gunn. Fischer announced her separation from Gunn in September 2007. In a June 2008 radio interview during the publicity tour of The Promotion, she confirmed that the divorce from Gunn had been finalized.

In the summer of 2009, People magazine reported her engagement to screenwriter Lee Kirk. Fischer confirmed this publicly on her MySpace page. The couple married on July 3, 2010.

In May 2007, while attending the NBC upfronts for her role in The Office, Fischer suffered a traumatic injury after falling down a flight of stairs in a Manhattan lounge, fracturing her back in four places. She was taken via ambulance to a Manhattan hospital and spent several weeks after in a New York City hotel before she was finally cleared by her doctor to fly to Los Angeles. After a twelve-week recovery, she returned to the set in time for the fourth season's first episode.

Fischer is passionate about animal rescue, and she is involved with the Los Angeles organizations Kitten Rescue and Rescue Rover. Before The Office, she worked for three years doing hands-on rescue work for the organizations. She still regularly fosters cats and has hosted Kitten Rescue's annual silent auction three years in a row (in 2008, 2009, and 2010).

Fischer maintains a MySpace blog and a Twitter page detailing her experiences on The Office and is the godmother of co-star Angela Kinsey's daughter Isabel.

On September 24, 2011, Fischer gave birth to a son, Weston Lee Kirk.

Filmography

Films

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1998	Born Champion	Wendy Miller
	Channel 493	Rane
2000	The Specials	College Girl
2001	Picking Up Chicks With Harland Williams	Dog walker	Short film
2002	Les Superficails	French Girl
2003	Melvin Goes to Dinner	Hostess
	Doggie Tails Vol.1: Lucky's First Sleepover	Kelsey
	Rubbing Charlie		Uncredited
2004	Employee of the Month	Whisper
	The Women	Leslie	Short film
	LolliLove	Jenna	Co-writer and director
2005	The 40-Year-Old Virgin	Woman #1	Background in a bar scene
	Lucky 13	Sorority Girl
2006	Slither	Shelby Cunningham
2007	Blades of Glory	Katie Van Waldenberg
	The Brothers Solomon	Michelle
	Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story	Darlene Madison Cox	Singing by Angela Correa
2008	The Promotion	Jen Stauber
2009	Official Rejection	Herself	Documentary
	Solitary Man	Susan
2010	A Little Help	Laura
2011	Hall Pass	Maggie Mills
2012	The Giant Mechanical Man	Janice

Television

Year	Title	Role	Notes
2001	Spin City	Waitress	Episode "A Shot in the Dark: Part 2"
	Undeclared	Sorority Girl Betty	Episodes: "Prototype" "Sick in the Head"
2002	Off Centre	Melanie	Episode: "The Backup"
	What I Like About You	Kim	Episode: "Copy That"
2003	Strong Medicine	Camille Freemont	Episode: "Maternity"
	Miss Match	Connie	Episode: "Kate in Ex-tasy"
2004	Cold Case	Dottie 1943	Episode: "Factory Girls"
2005	That '70s Show	Stacy Wanamaker	Episode: "Don't Lie to Me"
	Six Feet Under	Sharon Kinney	Episodes: "A Coat of White Primer", "Dancing for Me"
2005"13	The Office	Pam Halpert (Beesly)	152 Episodes
2007	Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip	Herself	Episode: "Breaking News"
2012	Dan Vs.	Amber	Episode: "Anger Management"

Awards and nominations

Year	Nominated work	Award	Category	Result
2004	LolliLove	St. Louis International Film Festival	Screen Actors Guild Emerging Actor Award
2005		TromaDance Film Festival	Independent Soul Award (as director)
2007	The Office	Emmy Award	Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series
		Screen Actors Guild Award	Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series
2008
		Golden Nymph	Outstanding Actress in a Comedy Series
2009
		Teen Choice Award	Choice TV: Comedy Actress
		Screen Actors Guild Award	Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series
2010
		Golden Nymph	Outstanding Actress in a Comedy Series
	Herself	Charles Guggenheim Cinema St. Louis Award	Outstanding Achievement in Film
2011	The Office	Screen Actors Guild Award	Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series