Jennnifer Jennifer Love Hewitt (born February 21, 1979) is an American actress, voice actress, and singer-songwriter. Hewitt began her acting career as a child by appearing in television commercials and the Disney Channel series Kids Incorporated. She rose to fame in teenage popular culture via her roles in the Fox series Party of Five, as Sarah Reeves, and the films I Know What You Did Last Summer and its sequel, as Julie James.

Hewitt's physical appearance has been the subject of much media attention throughout her career, having been lauded as one of the most attractive women in the entertainment industry by publications such as Maxim, in which she was named the sexiest woman in the world in 1999, and TV Guide, which named her the sexiest woman on television in 2008. In 2007, paparazzi photos of Hewitt on a beach led to a much-publicized matter in which she defended her weight, and was supported by other celebrities. These incidents received coverage from People magazine.

As a young girl, Hewitt was attracted to music, which led to her first encounters with the entertainment industry. At the age of three, she sang "The Greatest Love of All" at a livestock show. Just a year after that, at a restaurant-dance hall, she entertained an audience with her version of "Help Me Make It Through the Night." By the time she was five, Hewitt already had tap dancing and ballet in her portfolio. At nine, she became a member of the Texas Show Team (which also toured in the Soviet Union). At the age of ten, at the suggestion of talent scouts and winning the title of Texas Our Little Miss Talent Winner, she moved to Los Angeles, California, with her mother to pursue a career in both acting and singing. In Los Angeles, Hewitt attended Lincoln High School where her classmates included Jonathan Neville, who later became a talent scout and recommended Hewitt for her role in Party of Five.

Hewitt made her film debut in the independent film Munchie (1992). She became a film star after a lead role in the horror film I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), which enjoyed great box-office success (125,000,000 U.S. dollars worldwide). The film made Hewitt and her co-stars Freddie Prinze Jr., Ryan Phillippe, and Sarah Michelle Gellar some of the most popular young stars in the USA. She also appeared in the sequel I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998), which, though ultimately not as successful as the first film, took in more money on its opening weekend. Other notable film roles have included the high-school comedy Can't Hardly Wait (1998) and a starring role with Sigourney Weaver in the romantic comedy Heartbreakers (2001).

Hewitt was born in Waco, Texas, the daughter of Patricia Mae (née Shipp), a speech-language pathologist, and Herbert Daniel Hewitt, a medical technician.Hewitt grew up in Nolanville, Texas; after the divorce of her parents, Hewitt and her older brother, Todd Hewitt, were brought up by her mother.

Hewitt in 2002In 1991, Meldac funded the recording of Hewitt's first album Love Songs, when she was just 12. The album was only released in Japan in 1992 where Hewitt became a pop star. Her explanation for her success in Japan is that the Japanese "love perky music. The poppier the music, the better."After she joined the cast of Party of Five in 1995, she signed to Atlantic Records, who rushed her first single and second album, Let's Go Bang, out in October.Juggling her music career with her acting career, she recorded her follow-up in 1996. The first single, "No Ordinary Love," failed to chart and led to the album doing the same. Atlantic dropped Hewitt, who didn't return to the music scene for three years.In 1999, she recorded the single "How Do I Deal" for the I Still Know What You Did Last Summer soundtrack. The song became Hewitt's first charting single by climbing to #59 on the Hot 100 and #36 on the Top 40 Mainstream. It also reached #8 in Australia