Style.com / W
October 8, 2003
Jennifer's Primetime
Real-life superhero Jennifer Garner proves that nice girls finish first.
By Laura Brown
Jennifer Garner is too good to be true—so unanimously beloved that one can't help feeling just a little bit cynical at times. Like when awards show booker Danette Herman begins a chat about her by saying, "Well, I don't mean to gush, but...." Or when Gary Winick, director of Garner's upcoming comedy 13 Going on 30, talks up his star's kindness toward a critically ill boy who visited the set. Or when a key grip on the film describes a scene involving the actress, an ice cream cone and several overaffectionate dogs in New York's Central Park, noting that "they physically show her a similar love to that of the American public." It's all just a bit much.
But search in vain for a nasty story, a dark underbelly. There isn't one. Garner is Hollywood's version of Mother Teresa—only hotter.
Now entering her third season as superspy Sydney Bristow on the hit ABC spy series "Alias," Garner is feeling the love not only from fellow actors, fans, animals and small children but from the Central Intelligence Agency as well: She will soon be appearing in a series of recruitment videos. "I rang her and said, 'How would you like to lend a hand to your country?'" recalls CIA film industry liaison Chase Brandon. Garner said yes immediately. "It makes me feel so American!" she exclaims. (By the way, Brandon has a Garner story about a sick child, too—involving an autographed picture, a FedEx envelope and tears of joy.)
But back to the hot thing: Garner has the sort of body that sends mere mortals scurrying to the gym. In September, two separate magazines offered Garner-wannabes tips on getting "Jennifer Garner Arms." On a recent episode of "Nip/Tuck," an insecure teen asked for Garner's nose and even her ears. "That body is to die for," Donatella Versace gushed to Women's Wear Daily.
Meanwhile, Nike is hawking a collection of Garner Girl sneakers (for charity, naturally), and the public can choose from two video game characters and several dolls—bobblehead and otherwise—in Garner's likeness. So if you can't be Jennifer Garner, at least you can put her on your tchotchke shelf.
On a fiercely hot summer afternoon on the "Alias" set, in a desolate industrial complex in downtown L.A., Garner runs about, talking in silly voices with her assistant and inquiring earnestly after the welfare of a reporter: "You doing okay? You sure?" The heat is challenging the hair of about 40 extras, who will be playing a crowd of clubbers in a Frankfurt disco. Little do they know that somewhere, deep behind the deejay booth, lies a torture chamber.
Sydney Bristow knows. After all, she is trained in "Martial Arts, Surveillance, High-Risk Retrieval, Firearms, Driving Techniques, Pursuit & Evasion, Track & Field, Pilates, Linguistics and Theater Arts" (to quote her CIA profile). According to today's script, "Sydney takes frame looking unassumingly sexy in a Germanic pencil skirt and glasses—kind of a Helmut Newton, 91/2 Weeks vibe." Newton would indeed appreciate Garner's look, accessorized with black saucy-secretary glasses and a Louise Brooks–style wig (wigs are to "Alias" what Manolos are to "Sex and the City"). He might question, however, her choice of footwear: orthopedic-looking gray New Balance sneakers (Garner's feet are out of frame).
"They give me the coolest things to wear, don't they?" the star chirps while the straps on her Dolce & Gabbana corset top are adjusted. Garner does a lot of this: handing out compliments left, right and center to directors, stylists, caterers. Did we mention she's nice? The shoot wraps at 3 a.m., but the next morning, Garner is up at 8. Bouncing into the Bel-Air Hotel for breakfast, she sports a demure pink mini with a simple, tucked-in white T-shirt. The shirt reveals a lot about Garner's style, in that it isn't revealing at all: It's neither fitted, logoed or Juicy-ed. But those arms are bare—and they are indeed spectacular.
Throwing down her Marc Jacobs bag, Garner explains that she got up early to train her new Labrador puppy, a wrap gift from the crew of 13 Going on 30. Not that sleeping in is a Garner thing: "If I don't get five, five and a half hours, it's just not worth it," she says without irony, eyes blinking widely.
The actress christened her hapless puppy Martha Stewart. "I'm not obsessed," she pronounces before going on to praise Tivo and all the Martha Moments it can store for posterity. Her advice to the beleaguered domestic queen? "Just keep on cookin', Martha, or Mom and I are going to have to take over."
She has about her a glow, the particular shimmer of a star on the ascent. Although she worked through the summer on 13 Going on 30 (think a girly Big), Garner came back to "Alias" "excited to play this character again," she says, ordering a healthful bowl of oatmeal and greeting the maitre d' with a supersize smile. "You know, I auditioned for so many years, and now I'm just like a puppy who's ripped up a bag of Puppy Chow," she says of her Hollywood It girl moment. "I can't eat it fast enough."
Her cheerleaderlike enthusiasm comes in handy, because the "Alias" schedule is a killer, full of 12-hour days—and nights. (Garner has immersed herself so fully in the role that at the start of filming 13 Going on 30, Winick had to remind her to stop spying. "I would walk like I was creeping down a hall," she recalls.) Garner follows a now legendary training regimen: If she has a 6 a.m. call, she gets up at 4 (yes, 4) and works out. "Everyone talks about my workouts like I'm this freak," Garner sighs, pursing her lips. "Sometimes it will just be walking and stretching," she says, protesting just enough. "Seriously."
Perhaps, but Garner could probably break Lara Flynn Boyle over one knee. "Well…I don't know," she laughs politely. "Sometimes I look at [skinny actresses] and think, Oh God, I should look like that. I'm jealous because the clothes hang on them so well. But I would have to torture myself to look like they do."
Besides, with the help of such designers as Calvin Klein, Vera Wang and, most recently, Narciso Rodriguez, who dressed her for the Emmy Awards, Garner's buff look is now all the rage. "Ha, I fooled them!" she laughs drolly. "But maybe people are changing their ideas? As long as we don't focus too much on my thighs, it's all good."
The second of three daughters, Garner was born in Houston and relocated with her family to Charleston, West Virginia, when she was three. In high school she was a competitive swimmer, played saxophone in the marching band and nursed a serious ballet habit, often dancing for six hours a day.
After graduating from Ohio's Denison University with a degree in drama, she found her way to New York and took a job waitressing at the Upper West Side institution Isabella's between auditions. "Now I see people around, like [Isabella's regulars] Steve Martin and Katie Couric, and they think they know me," she says. "But I'm like, 'That's because I seated you at table five every Wednesday.'" In 1997, Garner migrated to Los Angeles. A year later, she had what she now refers to as "kind of a major week," landing a guest role on "Felicity" as Hannah, the geeky-gorgeous ex-girlfriend of Noel (played by Scott Foley). Garner and Foley began dating and married two years later (in the interim she appeared in a couple of pilots and an earthquake movie, and played one of the girlfriends in Dude, Where's My Car?).
Something about Garner intrigued "Felicity" creator J.J. Abrams, who was then toying with the idea that a nice young coed might just be living a double life as a government spy. "With Sydney Bristow, you had to see her and like her and then realize that, holy s---, she's lethal," Abrams explains. "Jennifer had that adorable, pretty thing going for her, but I always saw that there was something underneath."
"It's crazy, isn't it?" Garner says, of Abrams's leap of faith. "I kind of still can't believe it happened."
"Alias" quickly developed a cult following, and Garner received some legitimate mainstream attention, winning the best actress in a television drama award at the 2002 Golden Globes. Clad in a sleeveless red Vera Wang column that showed off her arms to devastating effect, she accepted the award with the dry observation, "Man, I know I was good in Dude, Where's My Car?, but seriously…"
Soon after, Garner was cast as a hooker in Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can. But it was Daredevil, in which she played saber-swirling babe Elektra opposite Ben Affleck, that scored the actress her own billboard. Again, her formidable figure was key: Her Daredevil screen test (which is included on the DVD) involves a "body shot," in which the camera circles her black-clad booty. "Oh, you saw that?" she says, blushing. "Well, you gotta give a little biscuit, you gotta give a little T&A."
Next summer, Elektra will be getting her own movie, and Garner will star in the dark Don Roos comedy Happy Endings, taking over from Gwyneth Paltrow, who dropped out for personal reasons. Garner's come a long way since she arrived with Foley at an ABC season-premiere party in 2001 and no one knew who she was. "It was like, 'Scott Foley, Scott Foley, who are you with?'" she remembers with a slight smile. "And he was like, 'This is my wife, Jennifer Garner—she's on one of your shows.' But I didn't care, it didn't matter."
Maybe, in the end, it did. Garner isn't fond of reflecting on media speculation that her turn in the spotlight—and, more significantly, her intense workload—were factors in her breakup with Foley earlier this year. "Honestly, I just don't have enough perspective on it yet," she says, exhaling and staring into the clumpy remains of her oatmeal. "I think there are a million reasons why things don't work." Her higher profile might have been "in there somewhere," she admits, "but I don't know—ask me in a year.
"The thing is, everyone says that when you're in Hollywood, you're living in the fast lane," she continues slowly. "But that's what it feels like—everything speeds up. If [a relationship] is not going to work 10 years from now, it feels like it's accelerated to this frenzy and then, it's not working—boom! And you're like, What just happened?"
In an all-too-glittering Hollywood irony, the couple officially separated on the night of the 2003 Academy Awards, at which Garner was presenting. The actress, resplendent in pale blue beaded Versace, took as her date her best girlfriend from childhood ballet class. "It was incredible to experience the peak of this world," Garner recalls, suddenly all smiles again. "We were sitting in the second row, looking at each other, thinking, What are we doing here?"
The media treated the Scott-and-Jen breakup kindly. "I think people understood that we were just two normal people who really loved each other," Garner says. "You know, we got quietly married in our backyard after being together for a couple of years; we never gave our wedding pictures out to be published. I think they got that we're both pretty brokenhearted about it." Garner filed for divorce in May.
Asked about dating, she responds with a definitive, "No. I'm just working, just kind of chilling. I have a dog, I have a house. I'm hanging out with my cats a lot, and I'm at work. I'm lucky, you know."
As it happens, cats and dogs have not been Garner's only companions of late. A few days later, US Weekly reveals that Garner has been "hanging out" with her "Alias" costar Michael Vartan as well.
Busted, she calls in on the way to a location to apologize (sort of) for keeping her private life private, while steadfastly continuing to do just that. "I feel so bad about this," she says of her decision not to speak about the relationship. Of Vartan, all she'll say is, "We've always had the most fun working together, and he's one of my best friends."
As for Garner's new tabloid brand of fame, "Alias" costar Victor Garber observes, "When you're close to someone, you can see how difficult it is to manage. People really don't know how hard it is. She remains such a compassionate, sensitive, caring person." When Garber's quotes are relayed to her, Garner exhales and says, "It's good to hear people say nice things because you get like, Oh, gosh, has the press decided to hate me?"
Well, no. But they are becoming increasingly curious, whether Garner likes it or not. Talk of her recent contract renewal—for another five years at a rumored $150,000 an episode—also makes her twitchy. "I can't even think about it," she sighs. "[The year 2008] seems so far away. By the eighth season I will have been gassed or drowned or something so many times that I will start to be less enthralled." Inevitably, though, those pom-poms start rustling again: "But you know what?" she adds quickly. "I love my job."
Does she ever. Happy Endings will be slotted somewhere in between working out, killing rogue terrorists and inspiring small children. "It will be the grittiest role I've ever played," Garner says of the film, adding that her assistant read the script before she did, "and she kept saying, 'You really don't want to do this. You're smoking! And you show your boobs!' And I said, 'What, because I'm a good girl and I play a good girl? Of course I'll do those things. I can be bad. You don't even know….'"
"Jennifer's Prime Time" by Laura Brown, has been edited for Style.com. The complete story appears in the November issue of W.
© Style.com 2003
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