|
Though she's been
singing, dancing, and acting professionally since she was 10,
teen queen Jennifer Love Hewitt could probably empathize with the hordes of
starstruck teenyboppers who trail around in the wake of her Party of Five
co-stars, Scott
Wolf and Matthew Fox. When her own favorite actor, erstwhile small-
screen dreamboat Johnny Depp, paid a surprise visit to the Party set in the fall of 1995,
Hewitt, who maintains an impressive collection of celebrity autographs, couldn't
quite contain her emotions; as she recalled later, "I started screaming at
the top of my lungs, locked myself in my dressing room and had a crying,
screaming fit." (Perhaps fortunately for her peace of mind, an
accommodating Depp phoned later from his New York City digs to invite the
adoring ingenue to drop by for coffee on her next visit to the Big Apple.) After
two seasons of hugs and hankies in the most angst-
ridden drama on television, Hewitt took a page from fellow Party player Neve
Campbell's playbook: Campbell shot to big-
screen stardom in the Wes Craven splatter-fest Scream, and Hewitt
supercharged her own cinematic career with a starring role in the equally gory (and
similarly lucrative) I Know What You Did Last Summer.
The second child and only daughter of working-
class parents who divorced when she was just six months
old, Hewitt was born in Waco, Texas, and raised by her speech pathologist mother in neighboring
Killeen.
Singing was Hewitt's first love, and even as a toddler she had a performance
jones. Mom once lost track of her 3-year-old baby girl while the family was
dining at a supper club that offered live entertainment; as Hewitt later
reported in an interview with TV Guide, her anxious mother finally found
her, "in another room singing 'Baby Love' on top of a grand piano." In
the years that followed, the budding starlet developed a dance repertoire that
came to include jazz, tap, and ballet, and became an experienced public
performer singing at livestock shows. By the time she was 10, Hewitt had toured
internationally with the Texas Show Team, a song-
and-
dance ensemble, and had her sights set on Hollywood. Her practical mother
resisted the notion of a showbiz career until a local talent scout endorsed
Hewitt's pleadings with a glowing professional appraisal of her gifts and
referred mother and daughter to a Los Angeles-
based colleague.
Mere weeks after relocating to the SoCal scene, Hewitt landed her first
professional gig, as a  regular on the Disney Channel series Kids Incorporated.
She also soon found work doing television commercials and print ads, most
notably for sneaker giant L.A. Gear —
she traveled to trade shows in Japan and Paris as an L.A. Gear dancer, and
appeared in a series of national magazine ads with basketball superstar Michael
Jordan. In 1991, at the age of 12, Hewitt was one of several dancers to work
up a sweat in the official exercise video for anatomically improbable superdoll
Barbie, and she sang all of the video's songs to boot. That vocal performance
must have been pretty impressive: Hewitt's debut CD, Love Songs, was
released in Japan (though not in the U.S.) the very next year. Also in 1992, the
singing-
dancing-
acting wunderkind made her first movie —
the direct-
to-
video kiddie flick Munchie, which also featured Loni Anderson and Dom
DeLuise —
and logged her first network television series, the Fox dud Shaky Ground,
which was a short-
lived vehicle for stuttering '80s icon Matt Frewer of Max Headroom fame. A supporting part as a rebellious youth befriended by interim nun Whoopi
Goldberg in 1993's Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit marked Hewitt's
feature film debut; that same year, she also appeared in her first starring
role, as the heiress protagonist of the USA network movie Little
Miss
Millions. The on-
the-
rise young actress returned to series television for a pair of 1994 ABC shows,
the action-
oriented McKenna and nber-
producer Steven Bochco's critically hailed drama The Byrds of Paradise.
Neither lasted out the season, and Hewitt was free to devote her creative
energies to her second CD, the suggestively titled Let's Go Bang, which
was released Stateside by Atlantic in 1995 and featured the multi-
talented star's first co-songwriting effort, "Free to Be a Woman."
Though only 16, Hewitt was a showbiz veteran when she landed her watershed Party
of Five role that same year. In the wake of near-
cancellation following its first season, the show was just beginning to pick up
steam when Hewitt joined the cast. Though her character, sensitive Bailey's
brainy, singing girlfriend, Sarah Reeves, was originally slated for a minor
recurring role, fans warmed to her instantly and she became a series regular. Another career milestone came along mere months after her 17th
birthday, when
Hewitt dipped her toe in the tabloid romance pool by briefly dating Blossom
alum and fellow celebrity rocker Joey
Lawrence, three years her senior. Though the relationship didn't last,
perhaps it provided  some additional creative fodder for the aspiring diva's
third CD, the R&B-
tinged Jennifer Love Hewitt, the release of which coincided with the
late-
summer arrival of 1996's House Arrest, her second feature film effort.
Making movies during Party of Five's summer hiatus became a full-time
occupation for Hewitt in 1997: She took on her breakout film role alongside Sarah
Michelle Gellar in I Know What You Did Last Summer, and also starred
in the direct-
to-
video teen romance caper Trojan War with Boy Meets World regular
Will Friedle. In addition to her busy filming schedule, Hewitt made time to
attend graduation ceremonies at Laurel Springs High, which she'd been attending
via correspondence courses since 1993. (College enrollment — possibly at
Stanford and potentially as a creative writing major — is in the offing for
the burgeoning star.)
Hewitt shares a plush Burbank apartment with her mother — still faithfully
shepherding her famous daughter's career after all these years — her cats, and
her collections of teddy bears and porcelain
angels. The year 1998 witnessed
roles in the grad-night romance Can't Hardly Wait and the cleverly titled
sequel I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (Hewitt crooned the first
single from the soundtrack for the film). She wrapped the forthcoming indie
drama Telling You, and the 1999 indie talkfest The Suburbans,
which also featured Ben Stiller. Her Party of Five spin-off, Time of Your Life,
debuted in the 1999 fall season, and was pulled after ten episodes due to poor
reviews and ratings — after surviving a long hiatus, the series was yanked for
good. Hewitt's first movie pitch, a romantic comedy called Cupid's Love
which netted the actress a cool $500,000, is in development at New Line.
|