Jennifer Grant Biography

Jennifer Diane Grant (born February 26, 1966) is an American actress, the only child of actors Cary Grant and Dyan Cannon.

Early life

Her parents divorced when she was only two years old. The reasons given for their divorce were that her father was unable to find his "perfect wife"; in addition, there was a 33-year age difference. Jennifer had a close relationship with her father for the rest of his life. Partly because her father did not want her to become an actress, she tried other things for several years. As a teenager during high school and on break from college she worked as a babysitter, stock clerk at the Village store in Pacific Palisades, grocery store checkout cashier at the Rainbow Grocery in Malibu, and waitress at the Pioneer Boulangerie restaurant in Santa Monica. After graduating from Stanford University in 1987 with a degree in American Studies, she worked for a law firm, and followed that with a job as a chef at Wolfgang Puck's Spago restaurant in Beverly Hills. When her father died in 1986, he left her half his estate, worth several millions of dollars; the other half of the estate went to her stepmother Barbara Harris Grant, with whom Jennifer has a close relationship.

Career

In 1993, seven years after Cary Grant's death, she played her first acting role in the Aaron Spelling television drama Beverly Hills, 90210, in the recurring role of Celeste Lundy. She appeared as a guest star in a variety of shows including Friends, and later appeared in several movies. In 1999, she was the lead actress in the WB television sitcom Movie Stars.

In 2011, her memoir, Good Stuff: a Reminiscence of My Father, Cary Grant, was published. Good Stuff is a portrait of her relationship with her father, who was 62 when she was born and died twenty years later. The title refers to a favorite expression of his, said in reference to things he approved of or situations he was happy about.

She was married to Randy Zisk for three years, but the marriage ended in divorce in 1996. Grant has volunteered as an actress and mentor with the Young Storytellers Foundation. Grant gave birth to a son, Cary Benjamin, on August 12, 2008.