In a candid InStyle interview published June 3, Jennifer Garner spoke about the “upheaval” her family faced after expanding it with three children with Ben Affleck, stepping back from acting after their 2015 separation, and being selective about roles that wou
When Jennifer Garner talks about her career now, she doesn’t frame it as a glamorous balancing act. She frames it as logistics—and as a family shift that arrived all at once.
In an InStyle interview published June 3, the actress opened up about how motherhood has shaped her work, describing the trade-offs that come with performing while pregnant, recovering, and then returning to a life reorganized around kids.
“When you’re in a performance kind of role, you give up a year/year-and-a-half of performance while you are pregnant, having a baby, recovering,” Garner said.
She said she took time away from acting after she and ex-husband Ben Affleck had their three children—Violet, 20, Seraphina, 17, and Samuel, 14.
After a brief return to the big screen for the Oscar-winning film “Dallas Buyers Club” in 2013, Garner again stepped back after separating from Affleck in 2015. The couple married in 2005 and divorced in 2018.
“When my kids were little, I worked so little, and then we had such an upheaval in our family, that I really hardly worked for a long time,” Garner told the magazine.
That upheaval has continued to shape how she chooses her projects. Since her and Affleck’s split, Garner has dated businessman John C. Miller, while Affleck also married and divorced Jennifer Lopez.
Garner also runs the organic baby food company Once Upon a Farm, and in the interview she said she is selective about acting work she takes. If a role is primarily filmed somewhere other than Los Angeles, she said she won’t do it—because she doesn’t want to uproot her family.
“This job is very selfish. It’s all about your schedule. It’s not about what the kids have going on at school. It’s not about pickups and drop-offs and making it home for dinner,” she said.
Even when the career requires time away, Garner said she tries to meet it head-on rather than pretend it doesn’t come with a cost.
“When I work, I don’t apologize to my kids for it. I do thank them for being so sweet about it. But that’s part of life. Working hard is part of life, and messing up is part of life. Tripping and falling—there’s room for all of it,” she said.
A new role is also helping her find language for what she’s lived. Garner said she relates to her character in the upcoming television adaptation of Elin Hilderbrand’s novel “The Five-Star Weekend.” In it, Garner plays Hollis Shaw, a recently widowed food blogger and mother.
“I relate to that feeling of like, Okay, I gave everything to mothering. I’m still their mom, I’m not going anywhere, I’m still all-in. I’m also really grateful to have this part of my life back,” she said.
Her latest comments land after she has spoken before about how her divorce affected her children and what parenting looks like when families split.
In a Marie Claire UK interview published Jan. 7. Garner said she “could not handle what was out there” about her and Affleck’s split over a decade ago. but added that “what was out there was not what was hard.” She said. “The actual breaking up of a family is what was hard. Losing a true partnership and friendship is what was hard.”.
In another interview earlier this year. published in Bustle in February. Garner discussed raising a family in “two separate households.” She told the outlet. “You don’t have the benefit of both sides of the yin and yang being in the same house. And so you have to have a bit of both in the way that you parent.” She added: “There’s a little bit of loss in that. but there’s also something gained in that.”.
The throughline across all of it is simple but hard-earned: Garner’s schedule isn’t a detail she can treat lightly. It’s part of a family structure that changed—and she has built her work choices around the life her kids still need.
Jennifer Garner Ben Affleck motherhood working mom InStyle Once Upon a Farm Dallas Buyers Club The Five-Star Weekend parenting divorce John C. Miller Violet Seraphina Samuel