Jennifer Garner’s children aren’t exactly the biggest fans of her work.
The actor and ex-husband Ben Affleck share three kids, Violet, 17, Seraphina, 14, and Samuel, 11. She says they aren’t very comfortable watching their mother act.
“My kids don’t love to watch me in things,” she told InStyle.
“They do — to be supportive, but I think it’s a little weird to watch your mom kiss someone or cry. It’s different.”
Garner, who stars in the upcoming Apple TV+ series, “The Last Thing He Told Me,” says her kids are much more likely to watch Affleck, who has starred in projects such as “Air,” “Good Will Hunting,” “Gone Girl,” “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” and “Daredevil,” a film which also featured Garner.
“They don’t mind watching their dad. They don’t want to see me sad and they don’t want to see me in a romance. They don’t love seeing me play someone else’s mom, honestly. I don’t know if they’ll watch this,” she said of “The Last Thing He Told Me.”
Garner has an eclectic resume, after initially rising to fame on the action series “Alias.” Considered one of the nicest stars in Hollywood, she went to star in "13 Going on 30," “Juno,” “Dallas Buyers Club,” “Yes Day” and “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past.”
In “The Last Thing He Told Me,” she plays a woman who works with her teenage stepdaughter, played by Angourie Rice, to find her missing husband. She says she connected to the premise.
“It’s really a story about motherhood,” Garner said during an April 11 appearance on TODAY.
“I’m familiar,” she added. “My teens are pretty great, so I can’t really toss them in there. It’s a different scenario, different friction, but I am familiar with being deeply embarrassing, yes.”
Garner also said being a mother provided a real challenge when it came time to play a stepmother with a complicated relationship with her stepdaughter in "The Last Thing He Told Me,"
“It was very difficult for me to play a character who’s not maternal at all,” she told InStyle.
“I’ve played a mom quite a bit and that is actually lovely, because it’s very easy to slip into mothering some awesome young actor, and then you build a relationship under it so at the end, you’re quite close.”