Jennifer Garner turns 54 this year, which feels fake when you remember she first drop-kicked her way into pop culture as Sydney Bristow on Alias back in 2001. Twenty-five years later, she’s still here, still working, still charming, and still somehow aging at a speed that makes the rest of us squint at the mirror a bit longer.
When Garner received her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Judy Greer summed it up better than anyone. “I am here to tell you that Jennifer Garner is not just like us. She is better than us. And not because she’s a star, but because that’s just who she is.” Greer went on to praise her as a mother, an actor, and someone who can “beat up bad guys and save the children.”
Alias turned her into an action star with a red wig and a Golden Globe in 2002. 13 Going on 30 made her the face of early-2000s rom-com comfort viewing. Love, Simon showed a softer side as a parent learning in real time. On Broadway, Cyrano de Bergerac director David Leveaux said, “She’s very direct; you can actually watch the mind working. Which is deeply French.”
Before all of that, Garner was a middle child growing up in Charleston, West Virginia. Born April 17, 1972, in Houston, she was raised without much money, with a mom who made clothes, cooked everything from scratch, and didn’t buy potato chips unless she fried them herself. Garner has joked about being an “Attention seeker” and “Peacekeeper” as a kid, sharing awkward haircuts and ballet photos online. She danced six hours a day. Violin didn’t go as well. “This girl took violin in school for six years and was so bad that her mother offered to pay her $5 to never play again.”
Her career didn’t explode overnight. She passed through Law & Order, Felicity, and a short-lived marriage to Scott Foley before Alias changed everything. Fame followed. So did tabloids, especially during her high-speed relationship with Ben Affleck. “We were babies,” she later said. “It happened so fast, I hardly remember what we were like before the kids got here.”
What’s different now is how accessible she feels. Seventeen million people follow her Instagram for fake cooking, real dancing, throwbacks, and pets named Hennifer and Birdie. She calls herself a “pretend” chef and means it.
And she’s not slowing down either. She’s producing and starring in Netflix’s One Attempt Remaining, a comedy about crypto, lost passwords, and second chances, and she’s heading to Peacock’s The Five-Star Weekend with Chloë Sevigny and Regina Hall.
Alias made Jennifer Garner a star. The last 25 years made her something rarer. Someone you still enjoy watching grow up.
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