Born in February of 1979 in
Waco,
Texas,
Jennifer Love Hewitt got her first
name from her older brother Todd, who named after a little
blonde girl he then had a
crush on. Her mother selected her middle name,
Love, which
she goes by offstage from her
best friend at
college. Her mother,
Pat, is a
speech pathologist and her father,
Danny, is a medical technician. Her parents separated when
She was
six months old.
Jennifer made her official performing debut at age 3 where she sang at a livestock show. At age 5, She was taking tap, jazz, and ballet lessons which led her to joining the Texas Show Team, which toured the Soviet Union and Europe. By age 10, the family moved to L.A. with the encouragement of talent scouts, while Todd stayed behind to finish high school in Texas.
Love quickly found commercial work and a role on Disney's "Kids Incorporated" (1984). she went through a series of television flops before finally hitting it big on "Party of Five" (1994) in 1995.
Since "Party of Five", Jennifer has blossomed into a movie star with teen hits like I Know What You Did Last Summer, its sequel I Still Know What You Did Last Summer and Can't Hardly Wait on her resume.
With Heartbreakers in 2001, audiences saw Love trying to expand her appeal beyond just youth audiences into the mainstream. Starring alongside Hollywood heavyweights Gene Hackman and Sigourney Weaver, Jennifer held her own and showed she can be sexy as well as sweet.
