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With all the luxuries that come with fame and fortune, there’s definitely a downside to it as well. Having one’s life on constant display is tough to navigate and actress, Jennifer Garner can attest to that as she recently opened up about what life was like being married to actor, Ben Affleck and constantly being in the public eye.
The 48-year-old actress appeared on the PBS series, “Tell Me More With Kelly Corrigan,” and Garner opened up about her struggles with the paparazzi during her 10-year marriage to Affleck. She recalled constantly being followed by cameras and the toll it took on her and her family. “Well, for 10 years there were at the very least six cars and often 20 outside of our house, and outside of school, and at the pediatrician’s,” Garner explained.
“And you’re begging them, ‘Please step aside from the pediatrician’s door, I have a sick kid. Please.’ Who cares about some dumb celebrity problem? It really is a celebrity problem. Unless it’s your child going through it, it’s not worth anyone’s attention or bother,” the actress said.
During the appearance, the “13 Going on 30” actress recalled being followed by the paparazzi in cars. “It’s a cost of doing business, but it just got to be ridiculous where they were causing car accidents all the time,” she said. “I’d go through a yellow light and there would be 15 cars that would go through the red light without compunction. Anywhere that we went it was a total circus.”
It’s one thing for famous parents to experience being followed by cameras, but it’s certainly tough when it interferes with their kids’ daily activities. “It was such a zoo for the families that they just said, ‘Can you please not?’”
The 48-year-old was desperate to explain to police officers what it was like for her kids to experience this that she had them at her house and let her five-year-old daughter explain “what it’s like to be a little kid and to have all these huge cameras running toward you, running toward your mom, running after you when you go to school and having other kids scared of it, or pointing at it, or looking at it.“‘And I’m scared of them,’” said Garner’s daughter to the officers.
The actress explained what it was like to be married to another famous person and have your relationship be constantly scrutinized. “I think there’s something about seeing yourselves reflected in news of some kind… whether it’s true or not,” she said. “If it’s true and you are starting to be serious with someone and they start saying, ‘Well, when are they gonna be engaged?’ It’s almost like… you just want to get there so that you can complete that and just maybe it will die down for a second.”
Garner continued, “You’re always kind of chasing peace and because it’s already been in print, it feels like it’s a done deal already, whatever it is... And then it’s immediately, ‘Trouble in paradise.’ And it becomes almost a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
Affleck and Garner married in 2005 and went on to have three children together, Violet, Samuel, and Seraphina. The couple separated and eventually divorced in 2017, two years after initially separating.