"I love acting because you don't have to do the same thing over and over again, every day, and that's what attracted me to wanting to do this for a living. So to be given an opportunity to create something completely different and live that out is the dream. It's incredibly rewarding."
Jennifer Marie Morrison (born April 12, 1979 in Chicago, Illinois) is an American actress, model and film producer.
She is known for her role as Emma Swan in the ABC adventure fantasy television series Once Upon a Time, and Dr. Allison Cameron in House.
She appeared in
- Miracle on 34th Street
- Stir of Echoes
- Urban Legends: Final Cut
- The Chronicle
- Touched by an Angel
- Dawson's Creek
- Big Shot Confessions Of A Campus Bookie
- House
- Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005)
- The Super Hero Squad Show
- Star Trek (2009)
- Chase (NBC)
- How I Met Your Mother
- Warrior
- Once Upon a Time
- Star Trek Into Darkness
- Superfly
- Batman: Hush
- This Is Us
- Bombshell (2019)
Tropes:
- Acting in the Dark: For Star Trek (2009) she and many others were only given the scripts for their scenes to keep plot details secret.
- Actor Shipping: She gets shipped quite a bit with her Once Upon a Time co-stars, most notably Colin O'Donoghue and Lana Parrilla. The flirty banter (on and off-screen) between Jennifer and Colin O'Donoghue (who plays her love interest Hook) leads a lot of Captain Swan shippers to ship Colifer. There is a large section of Swan Queen shippers who ship Jennifer with Lana Parrilla (Morrilla) to this day, due to the pair's on-screen chemistry, as evidenced by the large amount of fanfiction still being written about them.
- The Cast Show Off: Jennifer actually has a background in musical theatre, and has shown off her singing in the Albion movie, as well as Once Upon A Time's Musical Episode.
- Celebrity Resemblance: To Ginnifer Goodwin. Both had long dark hair around the same time they got famous, so they would often be mistaken for each other. And sometimes they would even sign autographs and give interviews as each other. So naturally they play mother and daughter in Once Upon a Time.
- Dawson Casting: Plays both adult and 18-year-old Emma in Once Upon a Time.
- Dye Hard: She's naturally blonde but was known as a brunette for a while. She dyed her blonde hair brown and auditioned for House. Bryan Singer later saw tapes of her with blonde hair and went "this girl's great, we should test her against Jennifer".
- Dyeing for Your Art:
- She had been dyeing her hair brown for House and - fed up at spending so much time getting it done by the studio department - went blonde for Once Upon a Time.
- She also dyed her hair red for Some Girl(s).
- Fake Guest Star: In How I Met Your Mother she appeared in half the episodes of the season she guest starred in. She's the only guest star on the show to do that.
- Important Haircut: She was required to keep her hair long in Once Upon A Time. As the sixth season was coming to an end, she cut it to shoulder length and just wore hair pieces for the remaining episodes.
- Playing Against Type: Jennifer is often smart, strong women but not always...
- She has a small role as a drunk Genki Girl in Knife Fight.
- She was also a ditzy trophy wife in Big Stan.
- Back Roads has her as a small town housewife who has an affair with a younger man.
- Playing with Character Type: Zoey in How I Met Your Mother is a lot more antagonistic than Jennifer's usual strong, grounded characters. She's an outright Soapbox Sadie in parts.
- Romance on the Set:
- With Jessie Spencer, who she starred alongside on House.
- And Sebastian Stan, who appeared in a few Once Upon A Time episodes.
- Separated-at-Birth Casting: As has been widely publicised, she and Ginnifer Goodwin have frequently been mistaken for each other so many times. So they were a perfect fit to play mother and daughter in Once Upon a Time. Abby Ross, who plays Emma as a teen, and Mckenna Grace, who plays Emma as a child, also both have a strong resemblance to Jennifer Morrison too.
- Serendipity Writes the Plot: She was written out of House because David Shore wanted to show that not every character around House was going to end up corrupt.
- She Also Did: Jennifer is credited as an Associate Producer for the first season of Glee - as she was the one who found the early draft and brought it to Ryan Murphy's attention.
- Those Two Actors: She, Ginnifer Goodwin and Josh Dallas all appeared in the TV movie Five as well as Once Upon a Time.
- What Could Have Been:
- She replaced Melanie Lynskey as the ditzy trophy wife Mindy in Big Stan.
- She was offered the chance to return for Once Upon A Time's seventh season, but opted to leave the series. She did however return for one more episode and came Back for the Finale.
- Why Fandom Can't Have Nice Things: She slowly withdrew from conventions and social media after being caught in a nasty shipping war and harassed online by Once Upon a Time fans, particularly "Swan Queen" shippers, which lead to her to also stop interacting with Lana Parrilla (Regina).
