Young as you wish: Garner mines humor in `13 Going on 30'
By Stephen Schaefer
Nothing could be further from Jennifer Garner's heavy-duty chores as double-agent Sydney on TV's ``Alias'' than her new comedic romp ``13 Going on 30,'' opening Friday.
Cast totally against type, Garner plays Jenna Rink, a bright but unpopular student who awakens on her 13th birthday and finds to her confusion that her wish has been granted - she's suddenly a 30-year-old, supersuccessful Manhattan magazine editor.
Garner, 32, proves herself more than equal to the challenge of being giddy, silly and somehow sexy as she propels this premise into comedy heaven.
It's been a starry ascent for the self-proclaimed saxophone-playing high school geek who recently was only a face in the crowd with a small role in Ben Affleck's ``Pearl Harbor.''
Garner sees ``13 Going on 30,'' in which young Jenna's glimpse of her future is one that must be avoided, as appealing to anyone willing to look back on those awesome and/or awful teen years. Garner not only indulged in teen slumber parties as research, she also strolled down memory lane.
``The difference between me and Jenna Rink is that I was not devastated by not being the popular
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girl,'' Garner said. ``I was one of the girls on the outskirts and separated by my inability to dress and a natural geekiness. Being in the band was a stigma, but I was not unhappy about it. Me and my friends, we thought that we were cool. So we didn't care.''
Garner said the film's underlying message is a serious one. ``It's a cautionary tale for 13-year-olds to just be careful, to not be seduced by some idea of who you should be, but to make choices based on who you actually are. For the most part, the scary thing about being 13 is that most kids have probably really pure, good instincts and feel like they need to do something in order to be accepted or they need to fit into a pattern. I think that this movie says that you don't have to - and actually, if you change yourself in order to fit that pattern, you could be very sorry later.
``There's something here as well for those whose teen era is only a long-ago memory. For adults, it's more about, OK, just remember that you're constantly shaping who you are becoming. What choices are you making to keep yourself on the path that you want to be on?''
For Garner, the path is as clear as a yellow brick road. Following her hit teaming opposite Affleck in last year's ``Daredevil,'' Garner is poised to join the few women from TV who cross over into film stardom - if this $37 million ``13 Going on 30'' is the hit everyone expects it to be.
Still, it's hardly all been a bed of roses. A dream coupling with cute Scott Foley, her on-camera love interest in the ``Felicity'' series that proved to be her big break, quickly came undone as ``Alias'' instantly made her one of Hollywood's chosen.
No one's saying why they split, but Garner confirmed she and ``Alias'' co-star Michael Vartan are a couple - despite what people might read in the tabloids.
``I don't pay a whole lot of attention to the tabloids, to be honest,'' she said. ``I look at anyone's tabloid cover and I think, `That's not true, that's not true, that's not true.' They set you up, and they want to knock you down, and you have to be aware of that going in.
``I was never naive about the flip side of success. I mean, I didn't have stars in my eyes about being famous. I never wanted to walk a red carpet. I never watched the Academy Awards until I started acting professionally. When I fell in love with acting and then fell in love with acting in front of the camera, I knew that you can't have one side of it without accepting the other. So I deal with the other. Every job has a flip side. Every single person in the world loves things about their job, and they hate things about their job. In my case, they're probably a little more extreme.
``The great thing about being on a TV show is that you're busy enough that you don't stay consumed with that stuff,'' she added.
Garner grew up in West Virginia, and her family has learned that what they read often has little resemblance to reality.
Humor, she said, is the only way to handle it. ``The cast and I were just laughing because last summer the press decided that I was pregnant and they ran all these pictures and they talked about it on and on and on. Then they were like, `Remember when you were pregnant?' and it's like, `Ah, where's the baby?' So it's, like, whatever.''
With a fourth season set for ``Alias,'' Garner is using her hiatus for the ``Daredevil'' spinoff, in which her Elektra returns to star in her own story. That films next month, days after the third season of ``Alias'' is wrapped up.
Even during ``Alias,'' Garner was gearing up for ``Elektra'' action sequences with her longtime trainer Valerie Waters.
``I love getting ready for something like this,'' Garner said. ``For `Elektra,' we want me to feel not bulky at all, but long and lean. So we've added pilates into my normal training; I'll have an hour with Valerie that's a combination of whatever: weight lifting, cardio, stretching, yoga. She is kind of on top of whatever is going on in the fitness world.''
As to how Elektra, who was murdered in ``Daredevil,'' can come back with her own movie, Garner smiled.
``Elektra never died.''
Funny, she sure looked deader than dead, and Affleck's Daredevil seemed to be in mourning.
``Yes,'' Garner said. ``But she didn't have a sheet over her. At the end, when Daredevil found the Braille necklace, that was from her.
``You know what? I think that I'm going to have to answer that question 100 million times in the next year, which means that Braille necklace did not do its job. But, yes, that little Braille necklace was a hint from Elektra that, `I'm still alive.'
