The Safe House - Expositions

NEW YORK (AP) - An otherwise great meal has been marred by the arrival of a sludgy, black concoction the waiter introduced as truffle soup. ``Will you think I'm a wimp if I don't eat this?'' asks Jennifer Garner.

``Uhhhh, no,'' her dining companion assures her. ``You might flatten me.''

``I could!'' laughs Garner, pleased by her certainty.

Clearly, she's a can-do gal, and on ABC's ``Alias'' she plays another: Sydney Bristow, double agent. Garner has fused her own buff physicality with agile acting to create TV's most robust new champion.

A quick rundown on this action-espionage drama (airing Sunday at 9 p.m. EST): L.A. grad student Sydney, who as a freshman was recruited by the CIA (news - web sites), discovers that her after-school job as an agent for its top-secret division, SD-6, is more than she bargained for.

Her medical-school fiance is murdered for knowing too much. Then Sydney learns SD-6 is, in fact, not part of the CIA but a deadly foe of the United States. Spurred by grief and shock, Sydney resolves to be a CIA mole to help smash SD-6.

Or, in the words of her estranged father (a double agent, too - or so he claims), ``Taking them down is what gets her up in the morning.''

``Alias'' was conceived by J.J. Abrams, also the creator of ``Felicity,'' which was where Garner, in a recurring role its first season, met the man she would marry, cast member Scott Foley.

Garner sings Abrams' praises, and not just because of his matchmaking. After film roles including ``Pearl Harbor'' and ``Dude, Where's My Car?'' and her short-lived series ``Significant Others'' and ``Time of Your Life,'' she is thrilled that he chose her for ``Alias.''

``No one ever took a leap of faith with me like he did,'' she says. ``Sydney is just an amazing character - strong and the girl next door and a superhero and incredibly human and intelligent and sad and looking for joy. Not to mention the different disguises and languages. Any ONE of those by itself would be enough.

``And the cast'' - which includes Carl Lumbly, Ron Rifkin and Victor Garber - ``is a bonus. I have to be SO prepared in a scene with Ron and Victor so that they don't just smoke me!''

Maybe. But there's never any doubt as to the star of ``Alias.''

Little wonder Garner is grateful for such a showcase, especially after landing a part in a Woody Allen film (1997's ``Deconstructing Harry''), then disappearing from the finished cut.

``I've gotten over the embarrassment of it being the first thing people mention during an audition,'' says Garner, who obligingly describes her edited-out performance: ``You know how there were two sides to every character? I was the fictional side to Elisabeth Shue.''

Now Garner plays a fictional side of herself - and of the woman she would like to be.

Already athletic, she has taken up martial arts and other rigorous conditioning. She speaks proudly of having ``transformed and reshaped'' her body for the role.

``The stronger I feel,'' she says, ``the more I feel like Sydney.''

And like the young woman she plays, Garner propels herself with gumption through each episode, doing whatever she is called upon to do. This includes her full-out brawls with exotic reprobates - not all of which is handled by a double.

``I feel challenged beyond what I can handle, at all times,'' she sums up. ``And I mean that in a good way.''

The 29-year-old Garner enjoyed a warm and loving childhood in Charleston, W.Va., where she studied ballet. By seventh grade she was performing in community musicals.

Then, while earning a theater degree from Ohio's Denison University, she hatched a plan that would next carry her to Yale's drama school. ``But I went to Manhattan to visit a friend and, on a whim, went on a couple of auditions. I got a job and stayed.''

That first job - in spring 1995 - was as an understudy for the 19th century comedy ``A Month in the Country'' at the respected Roundabout Theater. Its leading man: Ron Rifkin. ``Can you stand it!'' Garner crows. ``The irony!''

Far more visible roles followed. Then a move to the West Coast with a boyfriend signaled further success.

Now, midway through filming her first ``Alias'' season, Garner is happy, pumped - and willing to admit that she's tired. ``Filming a scene the other day, I got frazzled when I couldn't remember the rewrites I had gotten that morning,'' she says. ``I had to go upstairs to the bathroom and cry for a few minutes.

``THEN what could I do? First I thought, `I'm so embarrassed to go back down there.' But then I told myself, 'Jennifer, you are almost 30 years old! Pull it together and go downstairs and finish this scene!'

``And so I did.''

Sydney couldn't have performed any better.

Thanks to vaughnetc.!

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