Onscreen, Garner embodies the beautiful-yet-approachable ideal that makes casting directors see dollar signs: Girls want to be her friend; men want to be, well, more than that. “She’s very elegant, as a woman and as an actress,” says Matthew McConaughey, who starred opposite Garner in the forgettable Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, an update of A Christmas Carol that hit theaters last May. “But she’s also a country girl, and that’s a nice combination. She knows who she is and she’s not trying to be anything different.”
Felicity producer J.J. Abrams, who turned Garner into a household name by casting her as the ass-kicking Sydney Bristow in the long-running spy drama Alias, says he knew almost immediately that she had leading-lady potential. “She has incredible charisma, a wonderful smile, she’s gorgeous without being phony-looking, and she has a great, smart sense of humor,” he says. “My wife was always saying, ‘Oh, my God, she’s going to be a star. You better do a show for her.’ And when I came up with Alias, she was pretty much the only person I had in my head. Before we cast her, there were people who questioned: ‘Is she tough enough? Is she sexy enough?’ Two minutes later she was on the cover of every magazine, and no one was saying those things anymore.”
Meanwhile, on the big screen, Garner was showing off her range with a diverse string of projects, playing a tween magically transformed into a grown-up in 13 Going On 30, a call girl in Catch Me If You Can and a black-leather-clad superheroine in Daredevil, which also starred Affleck. There was no love connection at the time—she was married to Foley and he, dating Jennifer Lopez, was half of the tabloid supercouple known as Bennifer—but two years later, when they reunited to film the spin-off, Elektra, both were single, and friendship turned into something more. They were married on Turks and Caicos in June 2005, with Garner three months pregnant. “We were together a year, and we just started breeding,” she says. “We were like, ‘Let’s have a baby!’ And eight days later...”
The couple are clearly doing their best to prevent their relationship from turning into Bennifer, Part Two. They refuse to walk the red carpet together, and Garner says she doesn’t expect to work with her husband—who, thanks to 2007’s Gone Baby Gone, is now a promising director—again anytime soon. “I think he’s brilliant at what he does, but why rock the boat?” she says. “It works between us pretty well the way it is. I don’t know if I want to go to work with him. I’d be like, ‘Okay already, you got the shot. Let’s go home!’”
