Ginnifer Goodwin was born Jennifer Goodwin in Memphis, Tennessee. She attended the Lausanne Collegiate School there ("Lausanne fostered my little acting bug," she said in an October 31st, 2001 interview with The Independent) before going on to earn her BFA in Theatre from Boston University School for the Arts in 2001. Later that year, she won the Bette Davis Foundation Excellence in Acting/Professional Promise Award.

She studied with the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts, the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon (in conjunction with the Royal Shakespeare Company) and earned a certificate from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. She has also performed with Boston's Huntington Theatre Company.

Her first television job came in an episode of NBC's crime drama Law & Order which broadcast in November, 2001. In September, 2001, she took on the recurring role of Diane Snyder on NBC's Ed. "She is voluntarily and pleasurably an outcast in the Stuckeyville world. She's always been on the outside. She's curious, she's bookish and because she's on the outside, she knows what makes somebody popular," Ginnifer said of Diane in an October 30, 2001 interview with Tom Walter in the Memphis newpaper The Commercial Appeal.

In 2002, she earned the part of Maya in Comedy Central's first original movie, Porn 'n Chicken, and by mid-2003 she had finished acting opposite Julia Roberts, Marcia Gay Harden, Kirsten Dunst, and Julia Stiles in Mona Lisa Smile. This was followed by the romantic comedy Win a Date with Tad Hamilton! in January 2004. She starred in the independent comedy Love Comes to the Executioner, which had its U.S. premiere at the SXSW Film Festival in March, 2005.

Ginnifer recently finished filming the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line, to be released in November 2005, and is currently at work on the HBO series Big Love.

Credit: ginnifer.com