Jennifer Garner has opened up about just how dangerous the paparazzi got while she was raising her kids, revealing that photographers would run red lights, drive onto strangers’ lawns and even get her booted from a local soccer pitch just to get a shot of her family.
Speaking on the Shut Up Evan podcast, the actress painted a picture of an industry that had spiralled completely out of control during her children’s early years.
“If I went through a yellow light, 15 cars would go through the red behind me,” Garner 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.”
The situation, Garner explained, could turn genuinely frightening in everyday moments.
She described trying to get a sick child into the pediatrician’s office while photographers blocked the door, and recalled kids being knocked over outside preschool by paparazzi desperate to get to her or her ex-husband, Ben Affleck.
Even living in a neighbourhood packed with celebrities didn’t spare her, she says she became a target specifically because she “had the kids.”
Asked by host Evan Katz whether things had improved over the years, Garner revealed that two photographers have been assigned to trail her for more than two decades, and that an unusual bond has formed between them despite the circumstances.
She compared it to Stockholm syndrome, admitting that even as she’s developed an “odd respect” for the pair, she’s still had to call the police on them more times than she can count just to get a moment’s peace, walking her kids and her dog around the block without an audience.
