Jenna Fischer

Jenna Fischer
Character	Pam Halpert
Date of Birth	March 7, 1974
Place of Birth	Fort Wayne, Indiana, USA

Regina Marie “Jenna” Fischer (born March 7, 1974) is an American television and film actress. She is most widely known for her Emmy-nominated portrayal of Pam Halpert (née Beesly) on the NBC situation comedy and mockumentary The Office, and 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 Regina Marie Fischer in Fort Wayne, Indiana, but raised in St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of Jim, a plastics engineer, and Anne, a history teacher. Fischer, who has gone by the nickname Jenna her whole life, has one younger sister, Emily, a third grade teacher. She experienced her first taste of performing at age six, when she participated in an acting workshop taught by her mother at St. Louis' Henry School, 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 received 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

Jenna Fischer (Pam Halpert) with John Krasinski (Jim Halpert)

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 beginning, 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 dissuaed her from any future directing:

“

The directing was exhausting and the writing was painful. It was very difficult to direct and star in a movie. We also had a very small crew so I did a lot of things a normal director doesn’t have to do, like make the props and serve lunch. I was simultaneously getting into character, going over my lines, set dressing the next shot, coaching an actor, and brainstorming with my DP [cinematographer]. I’m good at multitasking, but that was too much for me. I couldn’t enjoy any one part the way I would have liked. I think I’ll stick to acting.

”

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.

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.

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 Theatre 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 in February and March of 2007.

Personal life

On October 7, 2000, Fischer married screenwriter James Gunn, the brother of Fischer's lifelong friend Sean Gunn. About seven years later, Fischer announced her separation from Gunn. In a radio interview during the publicity tour of The Promotion, she confirmed that her divorce from Gunn was finalized.

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

In May 2007, while attending the NBC upfronts for her role in The Office, Fischer fell down a flight of stairs in a Manhattan lounge and fractured 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 (she rescued her own cat while in college), 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, detailing her experiences on The Office, and is the godmother of co-star Angela Kinsey's daughter, Isabel.

Filmography

Films

Year	Film	Role	Other notes
2003	Melvin Goes to Dinner	Hostess
2004	Employee of the Month	Whisper
	The Women (short)	Leslie
	LolliLove	Jenna	Co-writer and director
2005	The 40-Year-Old Virgin	Woman #1	Background in a bar scene
2006	Slither	Shelby
2007	Blades of Glory	Katie Van Waldenberg
	The Brothers Solomon	Michelle
	Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story	Darlene Madison
2008	The Promotion	Jen Stauber
2009	Solitary Man	Susan
2010	A Little Help	Laura
2011	Hall Pass
2012	The Giant Mechanical Man	Janice	Written and directed by her husband, Lee Kirk.
2013	Are You Here	Alli
2014	Kiss Me	Vera

Television

Year	Title	Role	Notes
2001	Spin City	Waitress	Episode "A Shot in the Dark: Part 2"
	Undeclared	Betty	2 episodes
2002	Off Centre	Melanie	Episode "The Backup"
	What I Like About You	Kim	Episode "Copy That"
2003	Strong Medicine	Camille Freemont	Episode "Maternal Mirrors"
	Miss Match	Connie	Episode "Kate in Ex-tasy"
2004	Cold Case	Dottie 1943	Episode "Factory Girls"
2005	That '70s Show	Stacy Wanamaker	Season 7, Episode 12 "Don't Lie to Me"
	Six Feet Under	Sharon Kinney	Season 5, Episodes 1 and 2: "A Coat of White Primer" and "Dancing for Me."
2005–2013	The Office	Pam (Beesly) Halpert	Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series (2006, 2007) Nominated: Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series (2007) Nominated: Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series (2008)
2012	Dan Vs.	Amber (voice)	Episode: "Dan Vs. Anger Management"
2014	Comedy Bang! Bang!	Herself	Episode: "Jenna Fischer Wears a Floral Blouse & Black Heels"
2015	You, Me and the Apocalypse	Rhonda MacNeil	Also associate producer. Partially set in Slough, UK, the setting of the original The Office.

Awards and nominations

Year	Group	Award	Result	Film/Television series
2004	St. Louis International Film Festival	Screen Actors Guild Emerging Actor Award	Won	LolliLove
	TromaDance Film Festival	Independent Soul Award	Won
2006	Screen Actors Guild Awards	Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series	Won	The Office
2007	Screen Actors Guild Awards	Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series	Won
	Emmy Award	Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series	Nominated
2008	Screen Actors Guild Awards	Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series	Nominated
2009	Teen Choice Awards	Choice TV Actress: Comedy	Nominated
2009	Screen Actors Guild Awards	Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series	Nominated
2010			Nominated
2010	St. Louis International Film Festival	Outstanding Achievement in Film	Won	N/A
2011	Screen Actors Guild Awards	Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series	Nominated	The Office