Jennifer Garner Recalls the Earlier Days of Raising Her 3 Kids in the Spotlight: ‘Total Circus’
When Jennifer Garner was raising her three kids throughout the early 2000s, life for the 13 Going on 30 star and her family was a “total circus.” The beloved actress got candid about the challenges of being a mom in Hollywood during a new interview on Tell Me More with Kelly Corrigan.
“For 10 years, there were, at the very least, six cars, and often 20, outside of our house, and outside of the school, and outside the pediatricians,” she explained to host Kelly Corrigan in late October. “And you’re begging them, ‘Please step aside from the pediatrician’s store door, I have a sick kid … please.'”
The 48-year-old Alias alum is very strict when it comes to “[guarding the] privacy” of her children, Violet, 14, Seraphina, 11, and Samuel, 8, so being bombarded by the paparazzi wasn’t the most ideal situation. “It’s the cost of doing business, but it just got to be ridiculous,” she noted.
“Anywhere that we went it was a total circus,” the Golden Globe winner continued, noting the situation got so out of control that one of her kids had to quit extracurricular activities. “My one daughter tried to play soccer and it was such a zoo for the families that they just said, ‘Can you please not?'” Jen recalled.
The Elektra actress — who shares her kids with ex-husband Ben Affleck — said she wasn’t the only one affected by the endless publicity. Jen dished when one of her daughters was 5 years old, she “had written a speech” about “what it’s like to be a little kid” in the spotlight.
Fortunately, the doting mom and her little ones have adjusted to life in the limelight. Jen said her children may still be young, but they are “really emotionally wise” beyond their years. “[They are] able to talk about things that I was never able to talk about until I was 40,” she revealed.
Ever since Jen rose to fame in the early 2000s with her roles in Pearl Harbor and Alias, she’s been catapulted into the spotlight. The media attention became even more intense when she was going through her divorce with the Good Will Hunting actor, 48, whom she was married to from 2005 to 2015. Their divorce was finalized three years later in 2018.
Even though it hasn’t been an easy road for exes Jen and Ben, the two remained focused on their roles as mom and dad.
“The kids are their No. 1 priority, and they’re both amazing, hands-on parents,” an insider exclusively told Closer Weekly in February 2020. “They’re getting a lot better these days and are in a great place, which makes coparenting so much easier. They even go to each other’s houses and catch up over coffee.”
What a tight-knit clan!
