She is most widely known for her Emmy-nominated portrayal of Pam Halpert (née Beesly) on the NBC situation comedy and mockumentary The Office, and has also appeared in several films, including Blades of Glory, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, The Promotion and Hall Pass. Fischer was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, but raised in the St. Louis, Missouri suburb of Manchester, the daughter of Jim, a plastics engineer, and Anne, a history teacher. She holds a bachelor of arts in theatre, as well as a minor in journalism, from Truman State University, where she originally enrolled as a pre-law history major. However, she struggled to break into film and television, telling NPR that her first paying film job was a “sex education video for patients upon their release from UCLA Medical Center”. “I’m so attached to Pam’s journey,” she told NPR in 2009. in 2009, Fischer completed filming on the movies Solitary Man, and the indie A Little Help, which opened in the summer of 2010 at the Seattle International Film Festival.
