Jennifer Love Hewitt
Jennifer Love Hewitt is an actor, born 1979.
Jennifer Love Hewitt was working by the age of ten. Commercials first, then the Disney Channel series Kids Incorporated from 1989, which won her a Young Artist Award, then Sister Act 2 in 1993 and Party of Five from 1995, which made her a name at sixteen.
Two things happened in 1997. I Know What You Did Last Summer made her a horror lead and it stuck, and Can't Hardly Wait the following year installed her in the teen movie canon. Julie James is a good illustration of what she does well: Hewitt plays fear as exhaustion rather than hysteria, a wearier and more watchable choice, which is why the character survived a sequel and then came back in a legacy film almost thirty years later.
Film mostly wanted two things from her after that, the horror lead and the romantic comedy, and neither Heartbreakers nor The Tuxedo nor the Garfield pictures asked much. Television gave her the better second act. Ghost Whisperer, from 2005, was built around her completely: a network procedural whose lead has to cry credibly every week and sell a supernatural premise with a straight face, which is a much harder weekly job than it looks. She followed it with The Client List and a season of Criminal Minds, and since 2018 she has played Maddie Buckley on 9-1-1, the longest job of her career and an ensemble rather than a vehicle.
Movies (30)
- Tropic Thunder (2008)
- Garfield (2004)
- I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025)
- I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997)
- The Tuxedo (2002)
- Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit (1993)
- Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties (2006)
- I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998)
- If Only (2004)
- Heartbreakers (2001)
- The Hunchback of Notre Dame II (2002)
- Can't Hardly Wait (1998)
- The Client List (2010)
- Shortcut to Happiness (2007)
- Trojan War (1997)
- House Arrest (1996)
- The Suburbans (1999)
- Munchie (1992)
- The Lost Valentine (2011)
- The Audrey Hepburn Story (2000)
- The Adventures of Tom Thumb and Thumbelina (2003)
- Pups Alone (2021)
- The Paley Center Salutes Law & Order: SVU (2020)
- Jewtopia (2012)
- Confessions of a Sociopathic Social Climber (2005)
- Delgo (2008)
- AFI's 100 Years... 100 Passions: America's Greatest Love Stories (2002)
- Telling You (1998)
- A Christmas Carol (2004)
- The Truth About Love (2005)
TV (15)
- Criminal Minds (2005)
- 9-1-1 (2018)
- Ghost Whisperer (2005)
- The Ellen DeGeneres Show (2003)
- The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (1992)
- Hot in Cleveland (2010)
- Party of Five (1994)
- The Reichen Show (2005)
- The Client List (2012)
- The Weekenders (2000)
- Kids Incorporated (1983)
- Time of Your Life (1999)
- Love Bites (2011)
- Vietnam in HD (2011)
- The Byrds of Paradise (1994)
Music (2)
Where to start with Jennifer Love Hewitt
Everyone starts at I Know What You Did Last Summer, and it earns that: a slick, mean 1990s slasher with a lead who is frightened and furious in the right proportions. I Still Know What You Did Last Summer is the sillier sequel and knows exactly what it is.
Party of Five is the better acting and the harder sell, being a long serialised family drama that she joins partway through. Can't Hardly Wait is the teen comedy time capsule. On television, Ghost Whisperer is five seasons of gentle weekly melancholy that depends entirely on whether you enjoy her company, and 9-1-1 is the current job, an ensemble that finally lets her put something down. Tropic Thunder is a brief joke at her own expense and the funniest she has ever been.