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Jennifer Garner has shared an eye-opening account of what it’s like to be pursued by paparazzi photographers.
Speaking on Netflix’s Shut Up Evan podcast, Jennifer recalled what the intrusion into her life by the paparazzi was like at the height of her marriage to her ex-husband Ben Affleck.
“It was totally ludicrous,” she said. “It felt like ‘poor little me’, you know? ‘My poor little kids who have everything in the world’ – but it was a danger to everyone around us.”
She explained: “If I went through a yellow light, 15 cars would go through the red behind me. 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 to try to [take photographs]. So, it wasn’t just about us. It was just an industry that had gotten out of control.”
“If you show up and you’re trying to get to the paediatrician and you have a sick kid on your shoulder and you’re scared, and you can’t get into the door because you’re blocked by photographers, there’s something wrong with that.”
Jennifer went on to say that “the kids were paying the price”, recalling that children were getting “knocked over coming out of pre-school, by photographers who were so hungry to get to me or to Ben” or “trying to get to our kids”.
“So, as much as I recognised that, you know, we are privileged and lucky and grateful to all that that has afforded us, and all that that’s made available, at the same time, it just got silly,” she added. “And kids were at the centre of it.
“I lived on the street with a lot of much more famous and successful people than [me], but they followed me, because I had the kids. They wouldn’t follow Ben, they wouldn’t follow Matt Damon, they were like… there’s the chick with the kids. And that’s when you know it’s not right.”
Asked how things have changed since those days, the former Alias star pointed out that she still has two photographers follow her “every day” who’ve “been assigned to me for 20+ years”.
“I have a very interesting relationship with my main guy,” she admitted. “I mean, I’ve done anything to ask him to leave, and at the same time, we have an odd respect for each other. I don’t know.
“We’ve had some really real-life moments together. 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 OK [together]. You know what I mean?
“There’s kind of a Stockholm syndrome thing. 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?’.”
A clip of Jennifer’s interview has already racked up more than a million views on X alone since it was shared on Tuesday night, with many sharing how enlightening her words had been about life as an A-list public figure…
Jennifer and Ben were married for 13 years, and share three children.
Throughout her time in the spotlight, the Golden Globe winner has been an advocate for introducing more strict laws around paparazzi photography.
She said in 2018: “There was a solid decade where there were five or six cars minimum, and easily up to 15 or 20 on the weekends, outside of my house at all times. And looking back on that, I really feel the stress of it. Really, I could cry, talking about it.”
