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" Jenna Fischer&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;how I met my husband&amp;quot; story sounds like the plot of a quirky indie romance \u2014 which is fitting, since they fell in love while working on one. I&amp;#039;m hearing all the details over dinner at the Beverly Hills Hotel (rigatoni with short ribs for Jenna, tuna tartare for me). She arrived five minutes early for the interview \u2014 unheard of in the celebrity world \u2014 walking right over to me with a wide smile, like she might be about to ask my advice on a Jim dilemma. In dress pants, a gray cardigan, and a pretty red blouse, Jenna looks as all-American as two scoops of vanilla ice cream. And as we start to dish about love, fate, and favorite nail polish colors (she&amp;#039;s loving Essie&amp;#039;s Angora Cardi), I have to keep reminding myself that I don&amp;#039;t actually know her. She&amp;#039;s so laid-back, she could easily pass for your fun friend from high school, just like on The Office. Anyway, I&amp;#039;m interrupting her story.... Jenna and her guy, screenwriter Lee Kirk, started spending time together when she pitched him a film idea she had about three years ago. He &amp;quot;very politically,&amp;quot; she says with a laugh, rejected it. He pitched her three new ideas; she loved the first one and signed on as producer and star. (They&amp;#039;ve recently started shooting.) But, like any good romance plot, the lovers were star-crossed: Jenna was going through a divorce from her husband of eight years, director James Gunn, and Lee had just ended a seven-year relationship. Still, the two found common ground in the experience of being newly single. And after a slow build of &amp;quot;six or seven months,&amp;quot; the two confessed their feelings. They got married last July. If it took Jenna a little while to find her perfect guy, she also came late to stardom: Having grown up in St. Louis, Jenna moved to Los Angeles after college in Missouri and struggled in temp jobs for years while trying to find work as an actress. Finally, at 29, she got her big break on The Office. This month, the 36-year-old stars opposite Owen Wilson in the movie Hall Pass, directed by the Farrelly brothers (the kings of kooky, at-times-raunchy comedies \u2014 remember There&amp;#039;s Something About Mary?). In it, two wives give their hubbies permission slips, a.k.a. hall passes, to do whatever they want \u2014 including hook up with other women. Jenna admits she often still feels like a guest in Hollywood \u2014 which is why she delights in every surreal moment, and even keeps a MySpace blog about them. (.) A perfect example arises when we head out after dinner to pick up our cars at the valet. Says Jenna, &amp;quot;I love that they don&amp;#039;t give you a ticket for your car here; they just remember you.&amp;quot; Which, of course, they don&amp;#039;t \u2014 unless you happen to be a pretty major celebrity. I show her my parking stub and she cracks up: &amp;quot;Here I am, thinking they just happen to remember every car that goes with every person!&amp;quot; This isn&amp;#039;t an act; she honestly doesn&amp;#039;t know how famous she is. But that just adds to her charm.  REDBOOK: Were there lots of behind-the-scenes shenanigans when you filmed Hall Pass?  JF: The Farrelly brothers make movies the way you imagine a movie set would be when you&amp;#039;re a kid \u2014 fun all the time. On our last day of shooting we had an egg-toss competition with the entire cast and crew. I came in fifth. I think that&amp;#039;s really good!  RB: What hall-pass request would you make of your husband?  JF: I wouldn&amp;#039;t \u2014 I&amp;#039;m a newlywed! I want to spend all of my time with him, so I don&amp;#039;t need any kind of hall pass.  RB: Before your big break, did you ever think about a Plan B?  JF: I never really had a Plan B, though I did get to a place where acting was not very satisfying. I was a theater major in college, and whenever I did a play, I&amp;#039;d figure out, &amp;quot;What&amp;#039;s this person&amp;#039;s background?&amp;quot; I could have done that for &amp;quot;Delivery Girl Number 2,&amp;quot; but it&amp;#039;s not like anybody is going to ask, &amp;quot;Where did you grow up, Delivery Girl?&amp;quot; At one point I told my manager I was thinking about quitting, and she said, &amp;quot;Give me one more season; you owe it to me.&amp;quot; And that was the year I booked The Office.  RB: You went through a fake pregnancy on The Office while your sister, Emily, was going through a real one \u2014 and Pam and Jim&amp;#039;s baby was named after your new niece, Cecelia. Has becoming an aunt made you want to have kids of your own? JF: I already wanted kids, but even more so now. When Cecelia was 3 weeks old, Pam was on maternity leave, so I had a whole week off to spend with her. I took charge of the night feedings. It was so awesome: Every night at 9:30, I&amp;#039;d say, &amp;quot;You guys go to sleep now.&amp;quot; I wanted CeCe all to myself. We really bonded.  RB: So how did you lose the baby weight? Just kidding. But seriously, you&amp;#039;ve talked about going through a total body transformation via diet and exercise. Have you managed to keep that up?  JF: I go back and forth all the time. Basically, I care until I&amp;#039;m at a weight where my jeans feel awesome, then I eat and drink my way out of them. And then I have to care again. It&amp;#039;s like a five- to seven-pound gain/lose cycle.  RB: As an actress, do you feel pressure to stay in shape?  JF: In a normal job, if you gain or lose a few pounds, it&amp;#039;s no big deal. But in my business you have to tell someone so that the next time you go to a fitting, the clothes are the right size. It&amp;#039;s really embarrassing to have to say to your manager, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m now a 6 pant instead of a 4.&amp;quot; Emails go out, and they cc the agents: &amp;quot;Jenna would like everyone to know that she&amp;#039;s now a 6 pant.&amp;quot; This is why actresses obsess about their weight. It&amp;#039;s not a private affair.  RB: You&amp;#039;ve also talked about not going glam (veneers, etc.) because Pam has to look real. What&amp;#039;s it like to be in &amp;quot;plain Pam&amp;quot; mode?  JF: It&amp;#039;s nice because it doesn&amp;#039;t take long to get ready in the morning. But there are times when I wish Pam could be... I don&amp;#039;t know, maybe a little prettier. I think the most common compliment I get \u2014 which is very sweet, and I&amp;#039;m not complaining \u2014 is &amp;quot;You are so much prettier in real life.&amp;quot; And I&amp;#039;ll say thank you. And then I think, What does that mean, though? That I&amp;#039;m very unattractive on the show? But I&amp;#039;ve never been the kind of girl who turns heads. And that&amp;#039;s a good thing \u2014 it&amp;#039;s served my career.  RB: When you do dress up, do you like that part of the job?  JF: I like doing hair and makeup and putting on the dress, but then I want to take it all off 45 minutes later. Because you have, like, a corset in your ribs and then you&amp;#039;re bruised for two days.  RB: Your MySpace blog is full of great, candid details like this.  JF: When I&amp;#039;m writing my blog, I think of myself at 13 years old, back in St. Louis, daydreaming about Hollywood. I try to write to &amp;quot;me&amp;quot; from before. It&amp;#039;s exciting to go to an awards show and shake George Clooney&amp;#039;s hand. It&amp;#039;s fun to geek out with people over that, take them along for the ride.  RB: You&amp;#039;re a newlywed. Has your idea of The One changed?  JF: In a way, yes. After my divorce, someone said to me, &amp;quot;Finding love is not as hard as picking the right person to spend the rest of your life with.&amp;quot; It was Paul Lieberstein, the executive producer of The Office; he also plays Toby on the show. I held on to that advice when I was searching. I&amp;#039;d start to fall for someone and think, But that&amp;#039;s not a good match. The fluttery feelings aren&amp;#039;t enough. When I was younger, I thought you married the person you fell in love with the most. But as [my ex-husband and I] learned what we wanted, I realized there was a whole other set of criteria. You have to ask, Do we have the same goals?  RB: What was it like to date after your divorce?  JF: I thought I&amp;#039;d go wild with freedom, but instead I pretty much did what I did in college \u2014 stay home with my cat [laughs]. I didn&amp;#039;t want to waste time flitting around. I remember going out with one cute and funny guy. I thought, We could have a really fun eight months, but that&amp;#039;s eight months I&amp;#039;m taking away from finding Mr. Right. I can&amp;#039;t afford that. So I ended it.  RB: And even though you were hanging out at home with your cat, Prince Charming managed to find you.  JF: It&amp;#039;s amazing, right? In the midst of all that, I was having weekly script dinners with Lee, and I realized, I&amp;#039;m looking at basically the perfect man. It doesn&amp;#039;t get better than this. RB: Switching gears a little, you&amp;#039;re involved with several pet rescue organizations, and have even fostered cats. What is that like?  JF: It&amp;#039;s a lot like being a new mother. They have to be fed every two to three hours. You&amp;#039;re teaching them to use a litter box, so it&amp;#039;s a lot of cleaning and baths. But it&amp;#039;s so wonderful.  RB: On The Office, Angela is cat-obsessed. Would you ever set up a video cam to watch your cat, Cadillac?  JF: I don&amp;#039;t think so. But when my husband and I Skype when I&amp;#039;m out of town, we always make sure to include Cadillac.  RB: So when Pam hangs up her sensible skirts for good, what&amp;#039;s next on your list? A spray tan? A really long vacation?  JF: I&amp;#039;d love to color and cut my hair into a style, any style: bangs, a bob, go blonde. I&amp;#039;ve had the same hair for eight years, and it&amp;#039;s starting to get to me!  JENNA BLOGGED ABOUT OUR COVER SHOOT!  On her MySpace blog, Jenna writes all about her life at The Office. Here, the star tells what it was like to pose for REDBOOK.  &amp;quot;In the movies, posing for a magazine cover looks fast and fun: A photographer yells, &amp;#039;You look beautiful!&amp;#039; as rock music blares. While that&amp;#039;s not all wrong, it&amp;#039;s a more intense process than I expected.  &amp;quot;To get the one photo for this cover, we actually shot four to five outfits. It&amp;#039;s funny because even as I write this, I have no idea which outfit made it on the cover. I had a favorite: a leopard print, formfitting Dolce &amp;amp;amp; Gabbana dress. I wonder if that&amp;#039;s what they picked! [Editor&amp;#039;s note: She was spot on!]  &amp;quot;Personally, I trust the professionals to make a good choice. Because, the truth is, I&amp;#039;m not much of a shopper. My daily wardrobe consists of something like sweats, hoodie, Uggs, and a baseball hat. My best friend Angela [Kinsey] refers to my personal style as &amp;#039;Hobo Jenna.&amp;#039;  &amp;quot;Standing still and posing is also very different from what I thought. In order to give yourself curves in the right places while simultaneously hiding your gut, you have to stand in very unnatural ways. You have to hold the same position for a long time, usually far longer than is comfortable.  &amp;quot;My favorite part was when I got to lie in a comfy bed pretending to eat breakfast. I was starving so I really ate the cereal, and my achy feet appreciated the break from high heels.  &amp;quot;The whole experience took about 10 hours. Afterward, I called my husband and told him to meet me for dinner. I figured, I&amp;#039;m all dolled up, so it&amp;#039;s the perfect excuse for a date night. It was a good chance for him to eat with someone other than Hobo Jenna.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.redbookmag.com/life/interviews/a11465/jenna-fischer-interview/>