Jennifer Garner has opened up about how dangerous the paparazzi became while raising her children, revealing that photographers would run red lights, drive onto strangers’ lawns and even make her launch from a local football field just to get a picture of her family.
Talking about Shut up Evan podcast, the actress painted a picture of an industry that had spiraled 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 get our little one to play soccer and the association told us to stop because 20 cars were coming. So it wasn’t just about us. It was just an industry out of control.”
The situation, Garner explained, could become truly terrifying in everyday moments.
She described trying to get a sick child into the pediatrician’s office while photographers blocked the door, and recalled children being knocked over outside the nursery by paparazzi desperate to get to her or her ex-husband, Ben Affleck.
Even living in a celebrity-filled neighborhood didn’t spare her, she says, making her a target specifically because she “had the kids.”
Asked by host Evan Katz if things had improved over the years, Garner revealed that two photographers have been assigned to follow her for more than two decades, and that an unusual bond has formed between them despite the circumstances.
She compared it to Stockholm Syndrome and admitted that while she has developed a “strange respect” for the couple, she has still had to call the police more times than she can count just to get a moment of peace and walk around with her children and dog without an audience.
