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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. <p>
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. <p>
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. <p>
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 über-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. <p>
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. <p>
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 has also wrapped the forthcoming indie drama
Telling You, and the indie talkfest The Suburbans, which will also feature Ben Stiller, is in the
works. Filming on her Party of Five spin-off, Time of Your Life, and college enrollment—
possibly at Stanford and potentially as a creative writing major—are also in the offing, and
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.<br>
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