What’s not to love about Jennifer Garner? She is a treasure! The actress and mom of three is always proving herself to be hilarious, relatable, and so down-to-earth.
But she goes through hard times, too, like her divorce to Ben Affleck or some of the challenges she faces while parenting.
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Here are 10+ random facts fans didn’t know about Jennifer Garner.
1. She originally wanted to be an author or a teacher:
A lot of this came from the fact that her mother, Pat, is a retired English teacher .
Meanwhile, her father, Bill, is a former chemical engineer. In the end, Jen graduated with a degree in theatre.
2. Her big break was in *Alias*:
It was the action thriller that showrunner, J.J. Abrams, created before Lost .
The show resonated well with fans, airing for five years, from 2001 to 2006. It even helped kickstart her movie career!
3. She knows martial arts and taekwondo:
She learned them in order to perform her own stunts in Alias .
Any of the really intense scenes involving things like dangerous explosions, though, were handled by her stunt double Shauna Duggins.
4. She got back into training to prepare for her role in *Peppermint*:
“I’ve been training for a while on this,” she told People magazine.
“I did (mixed martial arts) MMA skills, gun skills, knife skills. It was the connection to the physical that made me kind of understand her fight for her daughter.”
5. She’s had a lot of on-set injuries:
Sadly, this is not uncommon in Hollywood.
In the past, she got tangled in wires while filming Daredevil (thankfully ex-husband, Ben Affleck saved her) and she sliced her knuckles open, twice.
6. She can play the saxophone:
She was even in a marching band in high school!
This was evident from this hilarious video where she put on her old uniform and did a performance to wish Reese Witherspoon a Happy Birthday!
7. She once spoke nothing but nonsense on *Ellen*:
This hilarious moment deserves to be watched, again and again.
You already know that Jennifer is quirky , but she really had viewers — and Ellen — in stitches when she failed miserably at this game.
8. She was married to Ben Affleck for over 10 years:
The pair got married in 2005 and called it quits in 2018.
While it’s sad that their relationship ended, they at least got three kids out of it: Seraphina, Samuel, and their eldest, Violet.
9. When she can’t sleep, she watches Tina Fey and Amy Poehler:
She told Vogue _:
“When I can’t sleep—and I am not someone who typically has that problem, but I really have in the last year—and I need something to switch my brain off, it has been Tina Fey and Amy Poehler,” Garner said.
“God bless those girls. I used to think I would never watch television on my phone, but there I am.”
Listen, to be completely fair to her, I would do the same thing.
There is nothing to hate about those two women!
10. She was not a fan of Ben Affleck’s phoenix tattoo:
“You know what we would say in my hometown about that? ‘Bless his heart.’ A phoenix rising from the ashes. Am I the ashes in this scenario? I take umbrage. I refuse to be the ashes.”
11. She gets insecure sometimes:
Celebs, they really are just like us!
“When you haven’t been kissed for over eight months, it’s strange.,” she told Vogue . “But it’s my job. It’s nine in the morning and you think, I could really use a shot of alcohol.”
She continued:
“Then, after a take or two, after everyone has seen your boobs and love handles, you just want to take every crew member and be like, ‘Please have mercy on me!’”
Based on her ” Tinder ” pic, she’d do just fine in the dating world.
12. She doesn’t regret her marriage to Ben Affleck:
In the past, Ben has said the same .
“I didn’t marry the big fat movie star; I married him,” she told Vogue . “And I would go back and remake that decision. I ran down the beach to him, and I would again.”
“You can’t have these three babies and so much of what we had. He’s the love of my life. What am I going to do about that? He’s the most brilliant person in any room, the most charismatic, the most generous.”
She continued:
“He’s just a complicated guy. I always say, ‘When his sun shines on you, you feel it.’ But when the sun is shining elsewhere, it’s cold. He can cast quite a shadow.”
13. She loves cooking:
“I read cookbooks like they’re novels,” she once said in an Oprah.com interview.
“I take them to bed at night. I rediscover one in my collection, and I pore over it.”
14. She nails the parenting game:
The actress always goes the extra mile for her kids, whether that’s dressing up for birthdays and special occasions, preaching to them about self-love, or wearing the rather unappealing things that they make.
She even once proved that she’s a relatable mom by sharing this picture:
“She barely made the bus on time, but at least her mother kept it classy,” she captioned the epic pic of her standing by the bus stop in her bathrobe and slippers with wet hair.
15. She’s forbidden her eldest daughter, Violet, from joining Instagram:
“Without even having parents who are well-known, I worry about all kids having to deal with this new pressure,” she said on Katie Couric’s podcast, “Next Question with Katie Couric.”
“My daughter’s at an all-girl school, and it’s such a huge problem.”
“She’ll occasionally talk to me about getting Instagram, and I can see why because I’m on there and it’s something kind of fun that I do, and I am modeling the opposite of what I want for her to do,” she said.
“How often is that in parenting?”
16. Garner made it very clear that her decision to divorce had nothing to do with any allegations of cheating.
“It was a real marriage,” Garner tells me. “It wasn’t for the cameras. And it was a huge priority for me to stay in it. And that did not work.” she said.
“We had been separated for months before I ever heard about the nanny. She had nothing to do with our decision to divorce. She was not a part of the equation.”
“Bad judgment? Yes. It’s not great for your kids for [a nanny] to disappear from their lives.”
17. She tries to keep as much of a clear head as possible when it comes to dealing with the media.
“I cannot be driven by the optics of this. I cannot let anger or hurt be my engine. I need to move with the big picture always on my mind, and the kids first and foremost.” she said.
18. She does her best to meditate.
“Every day I mean to meditate. Sometimes I get there, often I don’t make it.” she wrote on her Instagram post.
Considering how wholesome and stress-free she seems to be, maybe we should all be meditating!
19. She is a huge fan of *Schitt’s Creek*.
Which, if you aren’t yet, you really should be.
Garner made an entire collage of wigs she wore on Alias with wigs that Moira wore on Schitt’s Creek . We love a woman of taste!
20. She didn’t like the way the media kept trying to define her.
“I feel a lot less stressed about the industry and my place in it now than I used to. When you’re one of the ‘hot girls’ of the moment, you’re making choices that define you,” she said .
“I was defined first by choosing to go on hiatus, and then I was very quickly defined by pregnancies and babies.”
“Now my choices are defined by different things,”
“I don’t have the offers coming at me that I had during that first cover, but I know that what does come my way is because someone really wants to see me take a shot at a role.”
