Jennifer Garner compares relationship with paparazzo to 'Stockholm syndrome'

Jennifer Garner spoke candidly with Evan Ross Katz on the Shut Up Evan podcast about the complicated dynamic she has developed with a specific paparazzo who has been following her for over two decades.

After revealing she has two photographers who track her movements every single day, Garner struggled to find the words to describe her "very interesting relationship" with one of them.

"I have a very interesting relationship with my main guy," she said. "I mean, I've done anything to ask him to leave. And at the same time, we have an odd… respect for each other."

"We've had some really real-life moments together," Garner continued. "I was followed by someone who, for whatever reason, I thought was going to hurt me, and I ran to him because I knew him and trusted him, and I knew that he and I would be okay."

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The actress, who is promoting the Peacock series The Five Star Weekend, compared their unusual bond to Stockholm syndrome, which is described in a 2022 article by Chandar Sundaram, PhD as the "psychological phenomenon where hostages or victims develop sympathetic feelings and positive attitudes towards their captors."

"Like, there's kind of a Stockholm Syndrome thing," she said. "And at the same time, I've called the cops on him a million times and been like, ‘Can you please just give me a walk around the block with my kids and my dog?'"

Garner detailed how the overwhelming presence of the paparazzi in her life has also affected her children, as well as people in her community. 

"If I went through a yellow light, 15 cars would go through the red behind me," she said. "They would drive up onto people's lawns, even on a hillside. We were trying to have our little one play soccer, and the association asked us to stop because there were 20 cars coming. So it wasn't just about us. It was just an industry that had gotten out of control."

Netflix announced on Wednesday (July 22) that Garner will be an executive producer on the Netflix film 13 Going on 30, a reboot of the 2004 movie of the same name that she starred in.

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