The Safe House - Expositions

Garner, the star of the ABC show "Alias" and a 1994 graduate of Denison University, will return to the campus at 8 p.m. Oct. 5 in Swasey Chapel for a convocation. Video clips from "Alias" will be shown starting at 7:30 before the convocation. The event is free and open to the public and is sponsored by the Provost Alumni Scholar Series.

Garner won a Golden Globe earlier this year for her role in "Alias," an action-espionage drama that received a lot of buzz in its first season and won a People's Choice Award. Garner was nominated for a best actress Emmy Sunday, but did not win. The show's second season begins Sunday.

"Sydney is just an amazing character -- strong and the girl next door and a superhero and incredibly human and intelligent and sad and looking for joy," Garner has said. "Not to mention the different disguises and languages. Any one of those by itself would be enough."

But before Garner was known as CIA agent Sydney Bristow, she was a mainstay in Denison theater productions.

"She really paid her dues while she was here," Denison Professor Jon Farris told The Advocate earlier this year. "She had to learn her screen technique in the school of hard knocks."

Garner has told USA TODAY she had planned to attend Yale's drama school after graduating. "But I went to Manhattan to visit a friend and, on a whim, went on a couple of auditions," she said. "I got a job and stayed."

Now Garner, who was born in Houston and brought up in West Virginia, is one of Hollywood's most sought-after actresses.

In 2001, she was named one of USA TODAY's top 10 new stars of 2001. Her next big screen role will be as Elektra in "Daredevil."

Originally published Thursday, September 26, 2002

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