Jenna Fischer spent years as a struggling actress working temp jobs to make ends
meet before landing her big break as Pam Beesly on The Office. Here's a closer look
at her long and winding road to stardom, and her transformation over the years.
Jenna Fischer was landing starring roles right off of the bat when her acting career began in Saint
Louis. It helps that she was the one doing the casting, because the roles were for plays she
had written and performed for her family when she was a child. Fischer told Master Chat:
"I cast my little sister in various roles. My parents would joke with me
that I always gave myself the lead role in all the plays I made up."
Once it came time to audition for plays that didn't take place in her garage, Fischer was
hit with a hard dose of reality. In her book The Actor's Life: A Survival Guide, she said:
"These auditions mostly ended in failure; I never got the lead roles. In fact,
I barely got the supporting roles. I usually found myself being offered the
obligatory consolation prize: A role in the dancing chorus."
Like any other teenager, Jenna Fischer fought with her parents over
what she felt were restrictive rules and kept to her room. It wasn't until
her senior year when she discovered a baby journal they kept about her
that she developed a newfound appreciation for mom and dad. Fischer told Oprah.com:
"It had honestly never dawned on me that the people responsible for
incarcerating me in my bedroom [...] had once been two kids who were overwhelmed
and excited about having their first baby. To see that kind of humanness in them at a
time when I felt so disconnected from them was deeply affecting."
Another major source of tension was when Fischer decided she wanted to move
to Los Angeles after high school, but her parents stood firm that she go to college,
and she's glad they did. Fischer told Master Chat:
"My parents insisted I go to college and I'm really glad I went […] I don't think Hollywood
is a great place for a 17 or 18 year old kid to be figuring out who they are."
Following her college graduation, 22-year-old Jenna Fischer drove to Los Angeles with visions
of stardom in her head. But her dreams didn't happen quickly and she was soon
broke and depressed. She took a job as a receptionist to pay her rent while her
first few roles were in a video for mental health patients and extra work in an ad
for Universal Studios's Jurassic Park ride. Fischer described the time in her life as:
"Six years of small successes followed by heaps of rejection."
She landed better auditions and parts as the years went on but still struggled to get her big break.
One reason: Alyson Hannigan. Fischer told The Jeff Probst Show:
"I had been knocking around Los Angeles for years going to various auditions.
I would do eight auditions for a new television show and then at the very
end they would offer the role to Alyson Hannigan."
Fischer stated it was tough going on auditions in the first place but
the competition heated up if Hannigan walked in the room.
"She was my biggest competition. I would get to the final audition and I'd go,
'I know I've got this one.' And then she'd walk in the door and I'd go, 'Nope.'"
Fischer was up for the role of CIA spy Sydney Bristow in Alias,
which ended up going to Jennifer Garner. Fischer revealed to Entertainment Weekly
that she was told she gave a great audition but was, quote, "just not hot enough."
But she doesn't think she would have been a great fit for the physically demanding role.
Fischer told NPR:
"When I went in for The Office, the casting director said to me, she said,
please look normal. Don't make yourself all pretty, and dare to bore me with your audition."
And it didn't hurt that Fischer knew a thing or two about being a receptionist after working as
an administrative assistant for seven years while waiting for her big break,
which is a familiar story to all working actors.
"I was at the mall and someone discovered me and now I'm a movie star,
like those stories are fun to tell but they don't ever happen."
The Office made Fischer a star and led to big-screen roles in Blades of Glory,
and Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story.
Accident Fischer told USA Today that, just when things
were finally going her way, she fell down a flight of stairs at an Office cast get-together in 2007,
fracturing four vertebrae in her back and tearing a ligament in her elbow. Unable to work out
while she recovered from the accident, Fischer sulked and gave in to her junk food cravings.
She spoke of how difficult it was to be incapacitated while her body healed,
telling Shape:
"Before the accident, I wore size 26 jeans! I was truly in the best
shape of my life. Afterward, I gained 10 pounds and got flabby."
Once cleared to resume normal activity, she picked herself back up and focused on her
diet and exercise. Fischer returned to her pre-accident size-26 jeans,
and two years later showed off her figure on the cover of Shape, bikini and all.
In 2000, Jenna Fischer married Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn
after the two were introduced by his brother, and frequent collaborator, Sean.
Fischer was featured in his cult horror comedy Slither, but the part wasn't written for her.
By the time of Slither's release, she was the most famous cast-member thanks to The Office
and did much of the publicity for the movie. Fischer revealed during
one such appearance that Gunn had given her the role as a "birthday present."
She admitted in an interview with Redbook magazine:
"When I was younger, I thought you married the person you fell in love with the most. But I
realized there was a whole other set of criteria. You have to ask, Do we have the same goals?"
It ultimately wasn't meant to be for Fischer and Gunn, but the two have nothing but love for
each other, with Gunn telling the Alison Rosen Is Your New Best Friend podcast:
"I think in some ways we misinterpreted a really close bond."
In September 2007, People confirmed Jenna Fischer and James Gunn were
calling it quits. They shared a joint statement:
"The enthusiasm we have expressed for each other's lives, spirits and careers
is real — we have been each other's cheerleader and friend during the past
six years and continue to be so now and in the future."
The couple's shared respect for each other would come to personify
their entire divorce as Gunn shared on Facebook:
"I never quite understood how two people can love each other deeply but,
when they break up, they grow suddenly hateful and cruel."
He described Fischer as a great person and wonderful friend.
Speaking to Deadline in 2019, the prolific filmmaker explained their approach as:
"Let's get along as well as we possibly can and be
kind to each other because we're both a large part of each other's lives."
The best piece of love advice Fischer received after her divorce was from Paul
Lieberstein who played HR rep Toby Flenderson on The Office.
"Toby was this your fun little way of congratulating us? Yes oh ok."
She said his talk stuck with her as she took a dip back into the dating pool. Lieberstein told her,
"finding love is not as hard as picking the right person to spend the rest of your life with."
Fischer gave marriage another chance in 2010, marrying screenwriter Lee Kirk, whom she began
seeing while working together on the film The Giant Mechanical Man. Fischer revealed to Redbook
that they didn't jump into things right away, and there was a slow build during six or seven months.
In 2011, Fischer became a mother. While pregnant for the first time, she admitted to E! News that
morning sickness wasn't much of an issue, but she had weird cravings. The actress noted:
"In the beginning it was a lot of macaroni and
cheese and Lucky Charms. Now it's a lot of strawberries."
Vulture confirmed the pregnancy would be written into The Office accordingly. That September,
Fischer and her husband welcomed son Weston. Daughter Harper followed in May 2014.
Although being a mom is a major part of her life, she revealed to fans on Instagram it's not all
it's cracked up to be after her children billed the actress for a Mother's Day breakfast in bed.
But they did throw in a copy of The New York Times for free, so it wasn't that bad of a deal.
After The Office, it was back to the drawing board for Jenna Fischer. Although she was
working steadily in TV and film, including the Clint Eastwood-directed The 15:17 to Paris,
she hadn't found nearly the same level of success as she had on The Office. Fischer found her next
sitcom home in CBS's Man with a Plan, but, in what ended up being a career first, she was
fired in 2016 because focus groups felt there was no chemistry between her and co-star Matt LeBlanc.
Fischer rebounded with a co-starring role in ABC's Splitting Up Together,
but she's been finding out the hard way that Hollywood isn't going to
hand her everything just because she was on a hit show. She told Parade:
"I still audition for things. Sometimes I'm offered things,
but if there's a role that's different from the work I've done,
I have to go fight for it and I have to audition. There's no finish line in this business."
The thing Jenna Fischer takes into consideration when looking for her next project
isn't the script, director, or cast, but where the production is located. Fischer told Master Chat:
"Now that I have a family, I look for work that's happening in Los Angeles, number one."
And Fischer has shifted her priorities in order to stay close to her husband and two young children,
even if it means sacrificing a role that interests her. She stated:
"Sometimes there's a really cool indie film with great people, but it's shooting
in Louisiana for six weeks. As much as I would like to go create with that group of people,
I can't leave my family for six weeks. And I can't really bring them with me because
it's so expensive to relocate a family. […] I have a very pragmatic approach to work now."
Although she said goodbye to The Office in 2013,
Fischer and offscreen buddy Angela Kinsey, who played Angela Martin on the beloved sitcom,
returned to Dunder Mifflin in a way with their podcast Office Ladies. The New York
Times noted it was an instantaneous hit, garnering thousands of positive reviews
off the back of its first episode. The duo discusses all things Office on the show,
sharing everything from behind-the-scenes titbits to their desire for a reboot.
Fischer admitted the idea came from their co-star Rainn Wilson, who frequently told
the duo they should be fronting their own talk show. As Fischer revealed:
"We have dreamed for many years of one day taking over the fourth hour of The
Today Show. […] That was what morphed into the idea of a podcast — we wanted
to be storytellers and tell our stories out loud."
She told Entertainment Weekly that their time recording together is sacred,
and they have to ensure to always carve it out no matter what else is going on in their lives.
"We've been wanting to work together for a long time and and we finally
had a conversation where we said ok let's make the space for this."
The Office is arguably more popular now than it was during its original release,
and Jenna Fischer remains synonymous with the role of Pam. Far from taking offense, the actress
welcomes the comparison. In an episode of An Oral History of The Office podcast, Fischer revealed:
"I believed with my whole heart that this was the part for me. I believed I was the one who
should play it [...] I am literally the only person who should play this part. This is mine."
The actress revealed to Entertainment Weekly that she could empathize with Pam's struggle
because for years she was trying to make it in the industry. Fischer admitted:
"I know about that deep desire to have a change in your life."
And Pam's journey wasn't just Fischer's. She told The New York Times that fans
have come up to her to gush over how much her journey also meant to them.
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