PHOTOGRAPHER: NINO MUNOZ
ou won’t be surprised to learn that Jennifer Garner is a morning person. By the time we connect via video call at 9am, the actress has already completed a dance-cardio workout, caught up on email and meeting notes for ongoing projects, sent her kids to school and taken a good, long look at the lemon trees fruiting outside the window of her Los Angeles home office. “Oh, gosh – I’ve been up [for] so many hours already. I love early mornings,” she says, delivering a classic Jennifer Garner smile.
You know the one: that big, open beam we’ve come to know from Alias and 13 Going on 30 and Juno and Yes Day (and maybe even Valentine’s Day, too). Garner, 53, isn’t just famous. Over a career spanning three decades so far, fans and the general public have come to feel they know her. When she’s pictured running errands in jeans, a white T-shirt and a jumper – even if it’s a Celine cardigan, like the one she’s wearing today – we think she’s the kind of mum we wouldn’t mind chatting with at the school gates. When she glams up for a red carpet or a Marie Claire photo shoot, we’re mesmerised. When she’s going through heartbreak, we’re on her side.
Jennifer Garner is that rare breed of Hollywood actress who brings depth and humanity to her roles, maintains a down-to-earth demeanour and keeps her private life, well, private. Soon returning to our screens for a second series of Apple’s hit thriller The Last Thing He Told Me, the Golden Globe-winning star tells Emily Cronin how the past decade has shaped her, and why she’s feeling stronger than ever
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“[Confidence] is something society seems to chase,
but it’s not how I see myself. I think my identity is very anchored in a sense of wholeness”
It’s satisfying to see Garner kicking ass again. Also fun? Spotting longtime friends Victor Garber (they met on Alias and he officiated her wedding to now-ex-husband Ben Affleck) and Judy Greer (the grown-up Tom-Tom from 13) pop up in scenes. Does she realise that the latter movie is still responsible for a lot of people’s ambitions to work in magazines?
“Really? That’s kind of like at the CIA. They had something for a while called the Sydney effect. They asked me to come and speak and said: ‘Everyone who’s here because of Alias, stand up’ and all of these incredible women stood. I hold that so dear. That’s incredible – to get to influence someone like that.”
Ask Garner what she’s proudest of in work or life, and her answer is immediate: “My children.” She took a step back from acting when her three children with Affleck were babies and young children. “It never felt like a sacrifice. It was really hard to go to work and it definitely shaped the jobs I chose, in a big way.”
Jennifer Garner on wellness, work
& why she's starting the year strong
Stylist: Marc Eram
Editor in Chief: Andrea Thompson
Editor: Sunil Makan
Words: Emily Cronin
Senior Art Editor: Ana Ospina
Chief Sub Editor: Nicola Moyne
Hair Stylist: Eduardo Mendez
Make-up Artist: Kara Yoshimoto Bua
Nail Artist: Temeka Jackson
Cinematographer: Konstantin Karpeev
Social EDITOR: Dionne Brighton
JUNIOR SOCIAL EDITOR: Maggie Joyner
Producer: Clare Lazaro
Digital Technician: Ben Purcell
Assistants: Misael Vargas, Kameron Kubicki (styling), Kurt Mangum, Kevin Faulkner (photography)
Social Videographer: Mackenzie Green
Video Producer: Alexander John
Colourist: Maksim Zverev
Video Production: One Ten Media
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“It was really hard to go to work, and [Motherhood] definitely shaped the jobs I chose in a big way”
ELLIS
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FASHION: Jacket and skirt, both Elisabetta Franchi
So does daily journaling and, physically, her routine is different today than it was even six months ago. “I realised that I had pursued strength and stamina at the expense of mobility, so I’m incorporating things I haven’t done in so long, like yoga. I have to back up to go forward.” She’s in a two-a-day workout routine right now in preparation for an upcoming production. Today began with The Limit with Beth Nicely and will end with gyrotonics – “my favourite.” And, of course, she has her beloved fight scenes to act as another form of therapy.
Acting increasingly looks like one of many important things in Garner’s life rather than the thing. Along with her kids, high on her priority list are her early childhood education advocacy with Save the Children US and her work as co-founder of Once Upon a Farm. She joined the organic children’s food company in 2017 and has embraced her mission to upgrade the nutritional value of convenience foods for children and families. “The food industry was feeding little kids a bunch of garbage,” she says, as I notice a framed sign on the wall behind her desk reading, ‘The Office of Farmer Jen’. “It doesn’t have to be that way. We can do better by kids.”
The series was a sensation, launching Garner as unstoppable spy Sydney Bristow and Bradley Cooper as journalist Will Tippin. Everyone watched. (When I found out I’d be interviewing Garner, the first thing I did was text the friend I bonded with during our weekly Alias viewing parties at uni. Until a few years ago, she had me stored in her phone as “Alias Emily”.) I ask Garner why she thinks Alias resonated so strongly and she deflects to credit costars and collaborators. “I think it was the beginning of a lot of people’s careers that have nothing to do with me,” she says. “All I know is that it was an insane time. I’d work overnight every Friday. Then on Saturdays, I’d get up, work out, and the doorbell would ring: here’s your Russian tutor, here’s your French tutor, here’s the fight team coming to teach you this week’s fights…. It was really, really intense, but it worked out.”
In the middle of Alias’s five-series run, she made 13 Going on 30, in which she was bubbly and believable as a teen transposed into a 30-year-old New York magazine editor’s body. Then came a run of roles, startling in their variety, from action to romance to indie and beyond (fun fact: she even appeared in a Pussycat Dolls video). “The common thread is that each one of those roles matters and is important. I’m always looking to flip what I’ve just done; that’s the fun of being an actor,” she says. “Although… I really do like when there’s a little bit of action.”
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What we sense in her smile is a lack of artifice – which is really something when you consider that her abiding memory of “a pretty idyllic childhood” in Charleston, West Virginia, is yearning for the chance to pretend to be someone else. “I don’t ever remember not wanting to perform. I was always sniffing it out,” she says. At university, she dropped her southern accent (some words are still tells, though: ask her to say “lawyer”) and acted in summer Shakespeare festivals. Then she moved to New York and found early success with theatre auditions. Still, “I was so broke that I walked back and forth to the theatre because I couldn’t afford the subway,” she says.
Her big break came in 1998, with a small but riveting role in Felicity. That was enough for show creator JJ Abrams (dad to singer-songwriter Gracie) to cast her as the lead in spy action thriller Alias.
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“It doesn’t serve me to take in gossip about myself or anyone else, much less my kids, so I don’t do it”
“The actual breaking up of a family is what was hard. Losing a true partnership and friendship is what was hard”
“I make a big, concerted effort to see my people as much as I can, because that’s what matters…. That’s where your resilience is: it’s in your relationships and in the people who carry you through”
Today her kids range in age from 13 to 20 years old. The most surprising thing about raising teenagers is that “they’re just so cool!”, she says. “Parenting now has shifted. It’s more about parenting with a button on my mouth…. You have to let them grow up and make their choices. You don’t get to control it.” She’s unequivocally “so proud of how they walk through the world, and proud of them for trying hard.”
If her kids are the source of her greatest pride, navigating public interest in them, and in her own private life, has been “the hardest thing. Not hard in the grand scheme of what is hard in the world, but tricky for me and tricky for my family,” she says.
Garner and close friend Reese Witherspoon (executive producer of The Last Thing) have both lobbied for stronger privacy laws on behalf of children of celebrities. Garner protects her peace by refusing to engage with tabloid coverage. “It doesn’t serve me to take in gossip about myself or anyone else, much less my kids, so I don’t do it.”
“Time is the opportunity to heal. Time is the opportunity to forgive, to move on and to find a new way to be friends”
That approach insulated her through her and Affleck’s very public breakup in 2015, after 10 years of marriage. Revisiting that period, Garner’s reserve looks a lot like dignity, grace and backbone in the face of what must have been a bruising experience. It was the only way she could think of to protect herself.
“You have to be smart about what you can and can’t handle, and I could not handle what was out there. But what was out there” – she gestures into the vague distance – “was not what was hard. The fact of it is what was hard. The actual breaking up of a family is what was hard. Losing a true partnership and friendship is what was hard.”
Leaning on her community shored her up then and continues to now. “I make a big, concerted effort to see my people as much as I can, because that’s what matters…. That’s where your resilience is: it’s in your relationships and in the people who carry you through.”
Her latest project, then, is a return to form. In The Last Thing He Told Me on Apple TV+, Garner plays Hannah Hall, a woodturner whose husband’s disappearance sparks a quest for answers that draws her closer to her spiky stepdaughter (Mean Girls star Angourie Rice). The second series reveals a tougher, more physical Hannah. When she reaches for a fire axe in a chase scene, you believe she’s willing to use it on one of her pursuers (or at least their tyres).
“I love that element – that she actually has to grapple and fight for her life a couple times. I do think Hannah would have learned how to do that as part of preparing for any event or emergency,” she says. “This is a woman who has stayed up at night for many, many nights, scared out of her mind, creating a plan.”
“I realised that I had pursued strength and stamina at the expense of mobility, so I’m incorporating things I haven’t done in so long, like yoga. I have to back up to go forward”
Garner isn’t very online, so it’s hard to tell if she’s aware that she has a reputation as the most likeable woman in Hollywood. Online gossip sites not known for being the nicest call for her and Affleck to get the Oscar for best co-parenting, and celebrate her rumoured relationship with tech CEO John Miller (all she’ll say is “I have so much love in my life”). People leave affirming comments on her Pretend Cooking Show reels and monthly recaps on Instagram (“Our country needs more Jennifer Garner!!”). You get the sense that the whole internet is rooting for her happiness. Does that surprise her?
“So much about my life surprises me,” she says, and pauses. “That I’m still working, that I’m still alive, that my kids are healthy, that my work relationships – which are more like familial friendships – are still the same as they were 25 or 30 years ago, but richer and deeper and stronger. It’s all a gift. I just feel so grateful to my job for giving me these people.
“And then, yeah, that I’m able to co-parent at this point in time with peace and equanimity and a partnership that I didn’t know I would ever get back to. I think it’s important for women to know, when they think, ‘Oh, I’ll never see that, I’ll never have that feeling, I’ll never be friends with this person again’ [that] time is the opportunity. Time is the opportunity to heal. Time is the opportunity to forgive, to move on and to find a new way to be friends.”
FASHION: Dress, Zimmerman. Earrings, Lady Grey. Cuff and bangle, both Christina Caruso
FASHION: Jacket and skirt, both Elisabetta Franchi. Shoes, Black Suede Studio. Earrings, Lady Grey
FASHION: Dress, gloves and boots, all Michael Kors. Earrings, Christina Caruso.
FASHION: Jacket and dress, both Brunello Cucinelli. Shoes, Armarium. Earrings, Christina Caruso
FASHION: Trench Coat ELISABETTA FRANCHI. SHOES, Larroude. EARRINGS, Grown Brilliance.
FASHION: Jacket and skirt, both Elisabetta Franchi. Shoes, Black Suede Studio. Earrings, Lady Grey
O’Farm, as she calls it, is personal – the company uses produce from Garner’s century-old family farm in Oklahoma in some of its products. She’s particularly proud that O’Farm is available on WIC and SNAP, food benefits programmes in the US. The brand has a strong presence in Garner’s kitchen too. Her favourite things to reach for are “the Apple, Cherry & Elderberry Immunity Blend. And the oat milk smoothies, so creamy and delicious. And we love all the bars and the tractor wheels. Have you had the tractor wheels?” The company is planning to go public in 2026.
fashion: DRESS, ZIMMERMANN. boots, MALONE SOULIERS. EARRINGS, LADY GREY. CUFF AND BANGLE, BOTH CHRISTINA CARUSO
