Freaked-out boobs, paparazzi animosity, and a serious glow-up.
There's way more to Jennifer Garner than a high-profile divorce.
Jennifer Garner is doing just fine now.
According to Us Weekly, she bought a $7.9 million mansion after her divorce from Ben
Affleck.
But the "Alias" star was born into a family that worked hard to escape poverty.
Her father worked as a chemical engineer, and her mother went to graduate school and
became a professor, teaching remedial reading.
Garner shared on "Tell Me More With Kelly Corrigan" that because her mom wanted money
to travel the world,
"She babysat for somebody down the road who had a little bit of money.
They had five kids; she'd get a dollar a day."
Even though her West Virginia community didn't have much to offer in healthcare, job opportunities,
or education, Garner said the people were most concerned with their neighbors' needs
being met.
The actress now advocates for kids' education in poor communities as a Save the Children
Artist Ambassador.
While testifying to a congressional committee in 2017, she said,
"I knew children in my own school who had to cut holes in the toes of their shoes because
they couldn't afford to buy new ones.
[...] Children who eventually disappeared altogether.
I couldn't stand up for them back then.
But I can stand up for their families now."
When she's not busy making blockbuster movies, Jennifer Garner is planting a wildly impressive
garden.
Her Instagram is filled with photos of her beautiful creations, including massive plants
and blueberries that she hand-picks for snacking.
Gardening is more than just a hobby for Garner; it's also an essential form of bonding for
her family.
She told the Well + Good magazine that her inspiration began with her mother, who always
grew fresh food.
Garner said,
"My mom grew up on a little farm in Oklahoma with cows, chickens, fresh veggies — you
name it.
Everything they ate, other than sugar and flour, they grew and raised.
When I was a little girl, my mother always told me and my siblings fantastic, vivid tales
of growing up on the farm during the summertime, when they would eat like kings, with fresh
produce by the bunches and routine delicacies like homemade ice cream."
Jennifer bought the family farm in 2017, her mom, Patricia, told Southern Living.
Not only is gardening a big part of the celeb's family bonding time, but it is something she's
so passionate about that she turned it into a whole business.
Her company "Once Upon a Farm" sells organic food for babies and children.
Celebrities aren't really "just like us," but occasionally they are.
Take, for example, when Jennifer Garner finished binging "The Office" for the first time at
the height of the pandemic in 2020.
Like most everyone else at the time, Garner had a lot more time to unwind with her family,
and her way of unwinding was snuggling up on the couch while binge-watching shows on
Netflix.
That probably sounds familiar, too.
"The Office" particularly hit a note with Garner, who grew to love the gang at Dunder
Mifflin so much that she felt at an utter loss once she had reached the final episode.
In 2020, she took to Instagram to post a video recording her tearful reaction to the series
finale.
The video showed the actor hilariously sobbing in slow motion as she processed the ending
of her new favorite sitcom.
In the video, Garner sports a Dunder Mifflin shirt, showing the world that she is the truest
of stans.
According to Garner's Instagram video, she watched "an episode a day" with her kids.
"Oh my gosh, it destroyed me at the end.
Holy cow!
I was not expecting it."
When celebrities are asked to offer their best beauty tips and tricks, they might advise
fans to drink more water or to master a nightly moisturizing routine.
But Jennifer Garner believes that the only way to feel better about yourself when you're
feeling down about your looks is to stop sulking over your reflection.
She told "Today,"
"When you start getting super critical of yourself, turn around, pivot in that spot
and go do something nice for someone else.
Or go work out, or just take that and make it active instead of letting it just fester
in you."
Garner also advises not to place so much value on the outward appearance, since looks are
far less important than one's sense of character.
She told People that looks just weren't that big of a deal in her family.
"I was so not one of the pretty girls that I didn't even — I just bypassed insecurity."
"Yes Day" is a family film from the children's book of the same name by Amy Krouse Rosenthal.
In the book, the fictitious day requires parents to say "yes" to any of their children's wild
requests, no matter how silly they may be.
In Jennifer Garner's case, she participated in Yes Day with her children by spending the
night in the great outdoors at their request.
As Garner shared on Instagram in 2017, she and her kids slept outside in a tent.
She had already been participating in the holiday for five years at that point, and
this exact Instagram post is what ignited a Netflix movie deal based on the children's
book, with Garner as the film's lead.
In an interview with Vogue, Garner explained her family's tradition with the holiday, saying,
"I started reading ["Yes Day!"] when my middle daughter was three years old, and she just
became fixated on the idea of a yes day, so, I started doing yes days with the three of
them.
[...] For my family, it ends with us sleeping in the backyard in a tent — we have s'mores,
we have a pool so we'll go for a late-night swim, and we'll play flashlight tag until
way later than I would usually let them."
Jennifer Garner takes motherhood incredibly seriously, even to the point of making career-altering
sacrifices to be there for her children.
In her interview with Kelly Corrigan, Garner opened up about how she almost left a major
film role so she could be more available to her three kids.
The film was "Dallas Buyers Club," in which Garner plays an immunologist who treats AIDS
patients.
One of the only reasons she took the role was because her management team said if she
didn't take on another film project, she would have to give up her acting career altogether.
But being a mother of three while still breastfeeding posed an incredible challenge.
Garner struggled to balance motherhood and her filming schedule.
"My boobs were freaking out.
It was bedtime and we were doing some scene that was supposed to be light, and I started
crying and I was like: 'I have to quit.'"
Fortunately, her co-star in the film, Matthew McConaughey, helped smooth things out and
made filming a whole lot easier for her.
Garner also revealed to Collider that her kids really missed her when she was gone on
long days of filming, and she came home to a note one night asking for their favorite
homemade cookies.
Jennifer Garner has sparkled on the big screen ever since her feature film debut as "Woman
in Elevator" in 1997's "Deconstructing Harry."
Since then, she has appeared in dozens of movies and TV shows, managing to build up
an estimated net worth of $80 million.
Garner now spreads that wealth around.
According to Look To The Stars, the actor has supported at least 23 different charities.
In addition to her ambassadorship with Save the Children, Garner has worked with organizations
including No Kid Hungry, Baby2Baby, Stand Up To Cancer, and Hollywood Food Coalition
with Hang Out Do Good.
She donated $10,000 to West Virginia's Promise – The Alliance for Youth in 2020.
While most reports on Garner's community work are positive, Mississippi Today spoke with
a woman named Tracy Price who claimed she was not helped at all after a visit with Garner.
Price said:
"Jennifer came to my house.
But I have gotten nothing from anybody since then.
I have not received a thing.
[...] Nothing.
I had my grandkids here and I was losing my house and everything.
They never reached out to me."
Some might argue that invasions of privacy are what celebrities signed up for, but nobody
should feel like they have no right to a private life.
That's even truer when it's someone's children who feel like they have no escape from the
cameras.
On "Tell Me More With Kelly Corrigan," Garner described several incidents where her children
felt unsafe because of the cameras that were constantly following them to and from school.
Garner's daughter, who she says was five years old at the time, had even crafted a speech
to speak up against the paparazzi.
Garner shared some of the speech, which said, in part:
"This is what it's like to be a little kid, and to have all these huge cameras running
toward you.
Running toward your mom [...] and I'm scared of them.
They look like guns."
"Looking back on that, I really feel the stress of it.
I really — I could cry."
According to the BBC, in 2013, Garner and actor Halle Berry spoke up to champion an
anti-paparazzi law in the state of California in which paparazzi would be fined $10,000
and put in jail for snapping photos that involve the children of celebrities.
The law passed.
With all her beauty, charm, and grace, you might think Jennifer Garner would be the most
elegant girl in school.
Think again.
According to the "Alias" star, she was a massive band geek throughout high school.
On "Late Night with Seth Meyers" in 2016, the talk show host whipped out old photographs
of Garner playing the saxophone in her school band.
But instead of rocking the gorgeous brunette locks with a red carpet gown that we're used
to seeing her wear, Garner is sporting horn-rimmed glasses, bangs, and her band uniform.
She even named her saxophone "Sally the Sexy Saxophone" and gave Seth Meyers the full run-down
of marching band procedure.
"This is parade formation.
Clearly I'm breaking parade formation to wave to my mom or something."
"Yeah."
In a 2019 People interview, Garner said that in high school her style was "band geek-chic."
The same year, she got back into uniform and played the sax for Reese Witherspoon's birthday,
sharing the video on Instagram.
Honestly, what more reason could you possibly need to love Jennifer Garner?