January Kristen Jones, born January 5, 1978, is an American actress best known for her role as Betty Draper on the television show Mad Men. Jones was born and raised in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. She is named after January Wayne, a character in Jacqueline Susann’s Once Is Not Enough. She graduated from Edison Middle School and Roosevelt High School in Sioux Falls.
She currently appears in the AMC original television drama series Mad Men as young suburban housewife and mother Betty Draper. She is also well known for her role as Cadence Flaherty in American Wedding (2003), from the American Pie comedy film series.
She had the lead female role in the movie Love’s Enduring Promise as a pioneer family’s oldest child. Her character fell in love with a mysterious man who saved her father’s life.
Jones has had supporting roles in Anger Management, Love Actually, and Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights. In 2005 she appeared as a U.S. border guard’s frustrated wife in the film The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada directed by and starring Tommy Lee Jones. In We Are Marshall (2006), she played the role of Carol Dawson, wife of football coach William “Red” Dawson.
She appeared in the Season 18 Law & Order episode “Quit Claim”, playing a con artist who matches wits with Assistant District Attorney Michael Cutter, in which she is the lone surviving suspect connected to a real estate scam involving organized crime.
She also appeared in The Boat That Rocked, a British film about offshore pirate radio in the 1960s, renamed Pirate Radio for North American release in 2009.
In 2010 she is slated to star alongside Liam Neeson and Diane Kruger in the thriller film Unknown White Male, directed by Jaume Collet-Serra.
January announced in Vanity Fair in 2009 that she has joined Oceana as a celebrity spokesperson, working to save endangered sharks.
In 2008 and 2009 Jones was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Television Series Drama for Mad Men, and she won the Actor award at the Screen Actors Guild for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series for Mad Men.