In the late ’90s and early 2000s, it’s hard to overstate the ubiquity that was Jennifer Love Hewitt in American media. TV, movies, music, magazines: she was everywhere. Which raises the question: where is she now? There’s been no Shelley Duvall-style retirement, but after such a long time in the spotlight, her absence is definitely noticed. We’ll take a look at where she started, the heights she achieved, and how and why she took a step back from all of that.

Early Days

     MGM/UA Entertainment Co. Television

Born in Waco, Texas, Hewitt was the kind of kid on the fast track to show business from the beginning. Touring dance teams and local beauty pageants led the family to pack and move to LA, where Hewitt embarked on an early career in TV commercials, including spots for Mattel and LA Gear. At the tender age of 10, she was cast on Disney’s Kids Incorporated along with fellow soon-to-be-stars Fergie, Martika, and Mario Lopez. The show featured regular musical productions, and Hewitt was able to show off her triple-threat talent. A few parts in small films and pilots that didn’t go anywhere followed, but it wasn’t long before she landed a part on Fox’s smash hit teen drama Party of Five, as the girlfriend of Scott Wolf’s newly orphaned Bailey. An initial nine-episode arc in the second season turned into a regular role that lasted the run of the show.

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Teen Queen

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Hewitt wasn’t resting on her laurels and that regular series paycheck during Party of Five, though. She made a serious splash as iconic final girl Julie James in 1997’s I Know What You DId Last Summer, co-starring with a teen dream team of Freddie Prinze, Jr., Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Ryan Phillippe. The sequel, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, followed a year later. 1998 also saw the release of Can’t Hardly Wait, which takes place during the course of a graduation party and co-starred Ethan Embry, Lauren Ambrose, and Seth Green.

Hewitt’s film bankability led her to produce and star in Time of Your Life, a Party of Five spin-off which saw her character move to New York in search of her biological parents. Despite her movie success, the show bombed, and was canceled after only half a season. A TV biopic of Audrey Hepburn suffered the same fate, with decidedly mixed reviews.

Sticking with film seemed a better option for the moment, starring in Heartbreakers with Sigourney Weaver in 2001, and The Tuxedo with Jackie Chan the following year. In 2004, she starred in the live-action Garfield, which became her biggest grossing film ever.

Back to TV

     CBS Television Distribution

She managed to recapture that TV magic though, starring in the CBS series The Ghost Whisperer for five seasons beginning in 2005. Hewitt played Melinda, an antique store owner who also had the ability to see ghosts, and spent her time trying to help unhappy spirits pass over to a peaceful plane. After the show’s cancelation, Hewitt received acclaim for starring in the Lifetime movie The Client List in 2010, garnering Hewitt a Golden Globe nomination.

Other Ventures

     CBS Television Distributor

And acting hasn’t been Hewitt’s only career. Back in her Kids Incorporated days, she sang backup on co-star Martika’s hit single, Toy Soldiers, which in turn launched Hewitt’s own singing career. Her initial success was in Japan, where her first album was exclusively released there in 1992. She signed with Atlantic Records, and the relationship lasted for two albums before she was eventually dropped.

But she saw her first single hit the charts with “How Do I Deal” which appeared on the I Still Know What You Did Last Summer soundtrack along with a cover of Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive”. She continued to have moderate success with a few more studio albums before leaving the music industry in 2004 (although she dipped a toe back in briefly for a cover and video of “I’m a Woman” for The Client List).

Hewitt also had a foray into publishing: five issues of a comic book called Jennifer Love Hewitt’s Music Box, about a mysterious music box, and a 2010 book entitled The Day I Shot Cupid, which detailed her adventures and misadventures in dating. The book became an instant New York Times bestseller, and was credited with an increase in Google searches for the term “vajazzling”.

A Conscious Step Back

     Columbia Pictures

But her media absence has been conspicuous in recent years. She made no secret over the years of her desire for a family, and after a number of high-profile relationships that played out across magazine pages, she settled down with her co-star in The Client List, Brian Hallisay, and they have three children together as of 2021. And it was while pregnant with her second child and also working on a one-season arc on Criminal Minds that her retreat came about. Hewitt said to Elle magazine in 2015: “I was looking in the mirror, talking with myself, going, ‘Hey, we started something, remember? We were gonna take a step back. So let’s do that.’”

But the move didn’t entirely stick. As of 2018, she’s played a main role on the Fox police drama 9-1-1, as a troubled 911 operator. So if you’re looking for a Hewitt fix, you can find her there for the moment, or go back and enjoy some favorites from her days as the teen queen of Hollywood.