James Gunn and Jennifer Holland attend a movie premiere in 2021.Photo:Rodin Eckenroth/WireImage
Rodin Eckenroth/WireImage
James Gunn and his wifeJennifer Hollandhave collaborated together.
The power couple were introduced via a mutual friend in 2015 and started dating right away. Holland got her start acting in procedurals and had her first big break in the CMT biopic seriesSun Recordsbefore joining the DC Extended Universe.
She and Gunn have been working together for years on films and shows in the DCEU, and Holland has expressed her gratitude for the experience to PEOPLE.
“We got really lucky in thatwe work really well togetherand it just works for us,” she said in 2022. The pair got married that same year after seven years of dating.
“You are everything that is good in the world,” Holland said of her husband in abirthday postin 2022.
So who is James Gunn’s wife? Here’s everything to know about Jennifer Holland and her relationship with the filmmaker.
She’s an actress
James Gunn and Jennifer Holland attend a screening of ‘Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3’ in 2023.Jamie McCarthy/Getty
Jamie McCarthy/Getty
Holland and her family moved to Los Angeles when she was 17, and she worked odd jobs while trying to get her acting career off the ground.
“I was propelled into acting when I started taking a serious interest in the drama program at my high school. I started learning the craft of storytelling, doing plays and making some short films, and it felt so creatively rewarding,” Holland toldRegard Mag.
She landed roles on network procedurals likeCSI: MiamiandBones, and also starred in anAmerican Piespinoff movie.
In an interview withThe Hollywood Reporter,Holland joked about her past roles, saying: “Every role that got put in front of me, ‘Oh! I get to be in this terrible film!' I didn’t know the difference between quality. I had no clue. I was just so excited to be on set.”
Holland starred in the CMT network miniseriesSun Recordsas Becky Phillips, alongside costarsChad Michael Murray, who played her husband, Sam Phillips, andBilly Gardell.
Speaking toRegard Magabout what drew to her the project, Holland said: “I was most attracted to my character Becky. She was completely unlike any character that anyone had ever let me play before. She was conservative and strong, in the face of a lot of internal and external struggles that came along with being a woman in the 1950s.”
They’ve been together since 2015
James Gunn and Jennifer Holland attend a film screening in 2017.Rodin Eckenroth/Getty
Rodin Eckenroth/Getty
Holland and Gunn met through a mutual friend, actor Michael Rosenbaum ofSmallvillefame, who was a frequent collaborator of Gunn’s.
In 2015, Rosenbaum was dating a friend of Holland’s and Gunn noticed his future wife in a photo and asked about her. Noticing his interest, Rosenbaum offered to set them up, and asked his girlfriend to ask Holland how she’d feel about it. Holland hadn’t heard of Gunn, who was already an A-list director for his work onGuardians of the Galaxy, but was still open to meeting him.
“She described James as a producer-director,” Holland said of her friend, speaking toThe Hollywood Reporter. “I guess the fact that she put producer first or something, it just kind of gave me weird vibes.”
But looking up interviews online made her more open to seeing Gunn. “He seemed so incredibly charming in interviews,” she said.
The pair went on a date and took an instant liking to each other. They dated for seven years before getting engaged and, shortly after, married.
“We fell in love at someone else’s wedding, like we were characters in a rom-com … which I’m totally okay with, I LOVE ROM-COMS. But I didn’t know so many things then,” Hollandshared on Instagram on their fifth anniversary.
“I didn’t know you’d be my best friend. I didn’t know you’d make me a better person. I didn’t know that we would have a life together, filled with so much love, laughter, friends, joy, pain, struggle, triumph, peace and growth. My life is so much better with you in it. And I’m so in love with you,” she continued.
They got married in 2022
Jennifer Holland and James Gunn in Paris in 2023.Karwai Tang/WireImage
Karwai Tang/WireImage
After seven years of being together, Holland and Gunntied the knotin October 2022.
“James! Thank you for sharing your love, life and family with me. Thank you for choosing me, for elevating me, and for always making me belly laugh,” Holland wrote on Instagram. “Here’s to many more years to follow the first extraordinary 7.”
The wedding weekend was host to other festivities, including a Marvel vs. DC softball game, with Gunn noting that actor Michael Rooker played for both teams.
Gunn was previously married to actress Jenna Fischer from 2000 to 2008.
She’s a former gymnast
Jennifer Holland and James Gunn in 2023.Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic
Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic
Holland’s first brush with performance came in the form of competitive gymnastics, a sport she participated in until she was 12 years old.
“I grew up being a competitive gymnast and I think there’s something about that that made me love performance. And I got a lot of the sort of artistic creativity, the feeling of instant gratification from performing, so I think probably gymnastics kind of lit the fire for me to want to be a performer to some degree,” Holland shared in a conversation withCollider.
Her athletic background came in handy for fight choreography in her work as Emilia Harcourt in the DCEU, and she told PEOPLE she was grateful for that.
“I’ve always been very athletic. I love being athletic. I love being physical,” she said. “So being able to sort of marry that with my acting career has just been a dream.
But their showPeacemakerdidn’t just have fight choreography – the viral dance routine to Wig Wam’s “Do Ya Wanna Taste It” from the opening credits also put Holland’s gymnast past to good use.
“We’re all in the same room together. It’s not like they pasted us together in post or anything like that, so we all had to be on time with the choreography and the music as well as keeping a straight face the whole time,” Holland told PEOPLEof making the dance number.
She’s a frequent collaborator of Gunn’s
James Gunn and Jennifer Holland in 2023.Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic
Then, she joined the DCEU as Harcourt in the 2021 filmThe Suicide Squadand reprised the role for the 2022 Max seriesPeacemaker.
“I had no expectations that it was going to go any further than that. It was just, ‘I’m going to do this fun thing with James and have a great time for a couple of weeks.’ That’s kind of what we thought it was going to be,” she explained to PEOPLE about her first appearance as Harcourt.
“Then, the pandemic hit, James got bored while he was doing post-production onThe Suicide Squadand he ended up writing this series. When he first started writing it, he had absolutely no idea that Emilia was going to be such an integral part of the story,” she added.
InPeacemaker, Holland’s character is a lethal operative who acts as the Peacemaker’s handler in the field.
“It was great. We had an absolutely amazing time. At the end of it, our personal relationship was closer for the experience,” Holland told PEOPLE of working with her husband.
Speaking toColliderabout watching her husband work, Holland said: “I think I found his appeal as a director when I would get to watch him work. Before I ever worked with him, I would sit on set … just getting to watch the way he works, the way he tries different things.”
source: people.com
