James Gunn and his wife Jennifer Holland worked together.
The power couple met through a mutual friend in 2015 and started dating right away. Holland got her start in procedurals and got her first big break in the CMT biopic series Sun Records before joining the DC Extended Universe.
She and Gunn have been working together on movies and shows in the DCEU for years, and Holland expressed her gratitude for the experience to PEOPLE.
“We were very lucky because we work very well together and it just works for us,” she said in 2022. The couple got married that same year after seven years of dating.
“You are all that is good in the world,” Holland said of her husband in a 2022 birthday post.
So who is James Gunn’s wife? Here’s everything you need to know about Jennifer Holland and her relationship with the director.
She is an actress
James Gunn and Jennifer Holland at the screening of the film ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3’ in 2023.
Jamie McCarthy/Getty
Holland and her family moved to Los Angeles when she was 17, and she worked odd jobs while trying to launch her acting career.
“I started acting when I became seriously interested in the drama program in high school. I started learning the craft of storytelling, doing plays and making a few short films, and it was so creatively rewarding,” Holland told Sincerely Mag.
She got roles in network procedurals like CSI: Miami and Bonesand also acted in an American Pie spinoff movie.
In an interview with Hollywood Reporter, Holland joked about her past roles, saying, “Every role that was put in front of me, ‘Oh! I’m going to be in this terrible movie!’ I didn’t know the difference between quality. I had no idea. I was so excited to be on set.”
Holland starred in the CMT miniseries Sun Records as Becky Phillips, alongside actors Chad Michael Murray, who played her husband, Sam Phillips and Billy Gardell.
Speaking with Sincerely Mag about what drew her to the project, Holland said, “The thing that drew me the most was my character Becky. She was completely different than any character anyone had ever let me play. She was conservative and strong, facing many internal and external struggles that came along with being a woman in the 1950s.”
They have been together since 2015
James Gunn and Jennifer Holland at the screening of the film in 2017.
Rodin Eckenroth/Getty
Holland and Gunn met through a mutual friend, actor Michael Rosenbaum from Smallville fame, 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 hook them up and asked his girlfriend to ask Holland what she thought about it. Holland had not heard of Gunn, who was already an A-list director for his work Guardians of the Galaxybut he was still open to meeting him.
“She described James as a producer-director,” Holland said of her friend in a conversation with The Hollywood Reporter. “I guess the fact that she put the producer first or something, it just gave me weird vibes.”
But looking for an interview online made her more open to meeting Gunn. “He seemed so incredibly charming in interviews,” she said.
The couple went on a date and immediately liked each other. They dated for seven years before getting engaged and married shortly after.
“We fell in love at someone else’s wedding, as if we were characters in a rom-com … which is fine with me, I LOVE ROM-COMS. But I didn’t know so many things back then,” Holland shared on Instagram on the occasion of their fifth anniversary.
“I didn’t know you would be my best friend. I didn’t know you would make me a better person. Little did I 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 2023.
Karwai Tang/WireImage
After seven years together, Holland and Gunn married in October 2022.
The couple tied the knot at Dunbar Ranch in Aspen, Colorado, surrounded by friends and family, including A-list guests such as Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldaña, John Cena and Gunn’s brother Sean Gunn.
“James! Thank you for sharing your love, life and family with me. Thank you for choosing me, for lifting me up and for always making me laugh,” Holland wrote on Instagram. “This is still many years after the first extraordinary 7.”
Gunn posted a similar tribute on Instagram after their wedding. “After more than 7 years together, I finally married the love of my life,” he wrote. “What an amazing, beautiful, stunning day surrounded by the most wonderful family and friends in the world.”
The wedding weekend hosted other festivities, including a Marvel vs. DC softball game, and Gunn noted that actor Michael Rooker played for both teams.
Gunn was previously married to actress Jenna Fischer from 2000 to 2008.
She is a former gymnast
Jennifer Holland and James Gunn in 2023.
Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic
Holland’s first encounter with performance came in the form of competitive gymnastics, a sport she participated in until she was 12 years old.
“I grew up as a competitive gymnast and I think there’s something about that that made me love performing. I got a lot of artistic creativity, a sense of instant gratification from performing, so I think probably gymnastics lit the fire for me to want to be a performer to some extent,” Holland said in an interview with collider.
Her athletic background has come in handy for her fight choreography in her work as Emilia Harcourt in the DCEU, and she told PEOPLE she’s grateful for it.
“I’ve always been very athletic. I like being athletic. I like being physical,” she said. “So the possibility of marrying like that with my acting career was just a dream.
But their show Peacemaker didn’t just have fight choreography – the popular dance routine to Wig Wam’s “Do Ya Wanna Taste It” from the opening credits also made good use of Holland’s gymnastics past.
“We’re all in the same room together. It’s not like they glued us together in the mail or anything, so we all had to be on time with the choreography and the music, as well as keep our heads together the whole time,” Holland told PEOPLE. making a dance point.
She is a frequent collaborator of Gunna
James Gunn and Jennifer Holland in 2023.
Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic
Holland had the opportunity to work with Gunn on some of his films and TV shows. The pair first worked together when Holland starred in the 2019 superhero horror film produced by Gunn Brightburn.
She then joined the DCEU as Harcourt in the 2021 film Suicide Squad and reprized the role for the 2022 series Max Peacemaker.
“I didn’t expect it to go beyond that. It was just, ‘I’m going to do this fun thing with James and I’m going to have a good time for a couple of weeks.’ It’s something we thought it would be,” she explained to PEOPLE about her first appearance as Harcourt.
“Then, the pandemic hit, James got bored doing post-production Suicide Squad and ended up writing this series. When he first started writing, he had no idea that Emilia would be such an integral part of the story,” she added.
IN PeacemakerHolland’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. In the end, our personal relationship was closer for the experience,” Holland told PEOPLE of working with her husband.
Speaking with collider of watching her husband work, Holland said, “I think I was drawn to him as a director when I could watch him work. Before I ever worked with him, I would sit on the set … I could just watch him work, try different things.”
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Source: HIS Education