For most of her career, Jennifer Garner made acting look effortless. What she rarely talked about was the period when she stopped showing up on screen altogether. In a cover story for InStyle's Summer 2026 issue, the 54-year-old actress describes a long stretch when acting took a back seat to something far more complicated: keeping her family together.
'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 publication. She shares three children (Violet, 20, Fin, 17, and Samuel, 14) with ex-husband Ben Affleck, from whom she separated in 2015 and officially divorced in 2018.
The decision to step back wasn't entirely by choice. Garner explained to InStyle that acting demands a physical sacrifice that compounds quickly. 'First of all, 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.' The separation from Affleck, and the turbulence that followed in its very public aftermath, only extended the gap. When Garner did take time away from her children to act during those years, she told InStyle, they were 'such bricks' about losing mom time.
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Now that her children are older and more independent, Garner maintains a busy schedule that includes running Once Upon a Farm and completing her advocacy work for Save the Children, while also squeezing in more acting projects. She is candid about how much she has welcomed the shift. Speaking about her latest project, the upcoming Peacock series The Five Star Weekend, she said that it was a gift 'to have this year and a half where I just indulged [in acting], because this job is very selfish.' 'It's all about your schedule,' she continued. 'It's not about what the kids have going on at school.'
The 13 Going on 30 star navigates both motherhood and Hollywood in the interview, reflecting on the messy nature of each. 'You have to raise yourself at the same time [while raising children]. And just be so radically kind to yourself,' she said. On her own limitations as an actress, she was equally matter-of-fact: 'I can knife fight. I can do a compound bow and arrow. I've learned how to do all of this stuff. I want to use it. But I'm 54, I'm not going to be able to do it forever.'
Garner's The Five-Star Weekend, based on Elin Hilderbrand's novel and co-starring Regina Hall, Gemma Chan, Chloë Sevigny, and D'Arcy Carden, premieres July 9 on Peacock. Garner also serves as an executive producer on the series, a role that, in its own way, reflects the same shift she described in the interview. She's taken control and is determined to get the most out of this new chapter.
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