Early life
Fischer was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, but raised in the St. Louis, Missouri suburb of Manchester, the daughter of Jim, a plastics engineer, and Anne, a history teacher. Fischer has one younger sister, Emily, a third grade teacher. Fischer experienced her first taste of performing at age 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.
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.They have a son, Weston Lee, born on September 24, 2011.
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 detailing her experiences on The Office and is the godmother of co-star Angela Kinsey's daughter Isabel.
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.
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 mater's 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. In Season 8 in the office, Jenna ( Pam Halpert (Nee Beesley) says Cecelia Marie (Pam and Jim's daughter) will have a little brother due to Fischer's real life pregnancy.
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 as a theatre workshop in February and March 2007.
Jenna Fischer at The Heart Truth Fashion Show, February 2008.
Filmography
1998 Born Champion Wendy Miller
Channel 493 Rane
2000 The Specials College Girl
2001 Picking Up Chicks With Hartland Williams Dog walker
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
Post-production
2011 Hall Pass Maggie Mills
2012 The Giant Mechanical Man Janice
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