She rules the small screen as a sexy, rough-and-tumble spy on "Alias,"
and now JENNIFER GARNER's breaking out onto the big screen this Valentine's
Day opposite hunky BEN AFFLECK in 'Daredevil.' Jennifer talks about sparring
with her co-stars -- and what hubby SCOTT FOLEY thinks about that!
"We beat the tar out of each other," Jennifer tells our own
CHRIS BOOKER about her on-screen fights with Ben. "Why get beat up
if it's not going to be fun? I did get myself pretty whooped up. And I
did do some whoopin'."
"One time I didn't duck fast enough in a fight with Jen and she
had these big boots on, clocked me in the head and that rang my bell pretty
good," acknowledges Ben. "I couldn't remember my phone number."
Based on the Marvel comics character, 'Daredevil' follows Matt Murdock
(Affleck), a lawyer blinded by a freak accident that leaves him with super-charged
senses. Jennifer plays his love interest, the ninja assassin Elektra,
and like every great superhero, Daredevil has his evil nemeses to battle.
In the big screen go-around, COLIN FARRELL ('The Recruit') plays the villain
with perfect aim known as Bullseye, while MICHAEL CLARKE DUNCAN ('The
Scorpion King') takes on the role of crime lord Kingpin.
Putting together the blood-pumping fight scenes between the forces of
good and evil required extra work and rehearsal time from the cast. But
the street-fighting, sword-wielding Jennifer was up to the challenge.
"I don't think I could have just leapt into the role without a year
of 'Alias' behind me," she explains. "They really kind of got
me all primed and ready. And then I went and learned another couple of
tricks."
Some of those tricks involved learning to use complex wire harnesses
for the elaborate fight sequences. "Every single day we worked with
this Chinese wire team, led by master CHEUNG YUEN, and they're all speaking
Chinese and kind of all talking about how much we all suck all of the
time," she says, smiling. "And Ben and I just kind of muddled
through. He'd have a red face, I'd have a red face, and we'd keep kind
of keeping along. I haven't seen the whole thing finished, but I was amazed
at how cool it was. I kind of thought, we did that? Look at us go. Look
at Ben. Look at me, whoo hoo!"
Unfortunately, Jennifer found trouble in one fight scene with Colin Farrell
in which he was required to bite her lip, and he did just that -- hard
-- which caused her husband some concern: "I have big lips anyway,
and the next day [they were] out to here, and my husband went, "I
don't even wanna know what you did last night at work!"
'Daredevil' opens in theaters everywhere February 14, 2003.
