For someone who is a mother of three, and who describes herself as a “typical middle child”, it’s a bit of a surprise to realise that Jennifer Garner’s most recent film The Odd Life of Timothy Green, is the first in which she is a mum.
The film, which co-stars Australian Joel Edgerton, is a comedy fantasy drama about a couple who long for a child, write all the great traits their child would have and place it in a box in the garden and – low and behold – they awake to find a boy named Timothy standing in their kitchen calling them mum and dad.
Garner says it’s a great film about parenting.
“Our characters become instant parents. We’re thrown into it and Timothy teaches us more than we ever could have imagined about being parents and raising a child – things which resonate regardless of the way a child comes into your life.”
She says she had an incredibly emotional reaction to the movie.
“They accept him without question. They’re lovely people but they go momentarily crazy trying to protect their child.”
Garner has been married to this year’s Oscar winner Ben Affleck for almost eight years. The couple live in a $17.5 million Pacific Palisades mansion with their three children – Violet, Seraphina and Samuel - and she wears a 4.5 carat diamond engagement ring from Harry Winston. But despite the trappings of the Hollywood lifestyle, Garner says she misses the West Virginia home where she grew up with her two sisters and her teacher mother and chemical engineer father.
“It's really important to me that my kids spend a certain amount of time there because I feel there’s something much more concrete about West Virginia [than Los Angeles].”
At first, Garner says she thought it would be easy to be a working mother.
“I really thought when I was pregnant with my first that it wouldn’t affect my work at all, it would just be a baby that grows up on set.
“And I was absolutely wrong. I am of the view that for women, the high point of their career and needing to have babies are not really compatible.”
She says she is totally different because of her kids.
"Children force you to strip off any ugliness or vanities you may have in your life.”
Garner doesn’t intend having any more children, and she has "reserved" the northern hemisphere summer to make another movie. She says she is looking forward to looking beyond motherhood.
“The past few years have been about my family. I don’t know what’s going to happen next, but I’m ready for it."
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