The Safe House - Expositions

Some people really do seem superhuman. jennifer garner, for example, basically flew in from out of the blue to carry ABC's sly spy trip Alias on her statuesque shoulders, then nabbed a Golden Globe and cleared a path to movie stardom with the sort of BIFF! BAM! POW! vigor that makes the rest of us feel like shlubs. This month, she plays a call girl alongside Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks in Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can. In February, Garner stars as Ben Affleck's leather-clad, butt-kicking love interest Elektra Natchios in the comic book-based Daredevil. And from there, she leaps to a starring role in 13 Going on 30, about a girl who literally grows into popularity. Garner, 30 herself, can relate: For 13, she nabbed a reported $3 million salary and-ZONK!-director approval.

When the latter is noted, it's as if she's been hot-potatoed some kryptonite. "Oh, gosh, what a horrible thing to talk about," she says with a laugh. But while Garner is smartly taking pains to keep her ego in check, she's obviously savoring her new powers in Hollywood. "I don't know if I'm in the place to trump Joe Roth [head of Revolution Studios, which is making 13], but I do have a say," she says. "It's important to me because I know that I'm a director's actor." Movies, she notes, are a fairly new world to her. "So I need somebody solid to help me figure it out."

Garner needn't fret. Before she was cast as righteous double-agent Sydney Bristow in Alias, she was used to playing "the girl next door who was vulnerable and cried all time" on some short-lived TV shows as well as the very popular Felicity. Despite her contention that she's really a "wuss," she prepared for her exhausting Alias role by studying martial arts. And for Daredevil, she and Affleck worked with Hong Kong stunt whiz Yuen Cheung-yan, practicing three hours a day, six weeks straight on wires that dangled them 100 feet in the air. "Ben and I were really serious" about mastering the art, she says. "I love being on a wire, being up high and looking down. And there's nothing like the camaraderie of falling on your face with someone."

Balancing several projects can't be all that easy, either, what with her ungodly hours. Just try to reach her on her cell phone ("I'm so sorry!" she says, "I've been in Siberia!"). And good luck finding a couch in her house. The place "looks kind of like my dorm room looked-very unfurnished, workout clothes spilling out of every drawer," says Garner, who has at least successfully converted one bedroom into a gym. But there's no time for bitching. "Sometimes I hate that my interviews are about how long my hours are and how hard I work because who cares? The whole country works," says Garner, who every Sunday prepares her own food-mainly salads and lasagna-for the week. "I love what I do, so I just keep looking forward."

The Houston-born Garner and her two sisters were raised in West Virginia, protected from the frivolity of TV, makeup, and jewelry. Her parents, Bill and Pat, were "a tad conservative," allows Garner, who devoured Babette's Feast when they weren't looking and developed her penchant for discipline practicing ballet six hours a day. She swears she didn't secretly yearn to go glam as a kid, but she did have romantic notions early on. "I so badly wanted to play Juliet before I even knew what acting was. In kindergarten, I named my hermit crab Juliet."

It took her a while to come out of her own shell. At Charleston's George Washington High, she played sax in the band ("I was a little bit nerdy"). After graduating from Ohio's Denison University in 1994, she moved to New York, where she lived on a futon in her landlord's kitchen for $400 a month and understudied for $150 a week in A Month in the Country. "I should have been more scared than I was," she says. "I walked around with my jaw on my chest. I was so excited to be there."

Then came the milestones: her TV debut in a 1995 Danielle Steele mini- series, those teary tube roles, and a tiny part in Woody Allen's Deconstructing Harry. In 1998, she wound up with a recurring role on Felicity, which introduced her to future husband Scott Foley-whom she joined in last year's unreleased indie heist flick Rennie's Landing-and show-runner J.J. Abrams, future Alias creator. Abrams, who is scripting the next movie version of Superman, doesn't have far to look for inspiration. "Jennifer jumps into things fearlessly," he says. "It's amazing to watch someone who's so game, so hungry to do work. And what she can't do, she figures out how to do. She's wildly capable and smart."

Garner does have some mere mortal moments. She has an odd thing for kindred-if more suspect-über-go-getter Martha Stewart ("I find watching her to be the most soothing activity in the world"). She recently found time to make a donation to her favorite L.A. public alterna-rock radio station. ("They mentioned my name on air?" she sighs, making it clear she'd opted for incognito.)

But all demurring aside, isn't Garner having at least a little fun eenie-meenie-miney-mo-ing over directors for 13 Going on 30? Again, she dons her playful cape. "We're thinking either Spielberg or Scorsese, and I'm going to say no to everybody else." ZAM!

Back To All About Alias 2002