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JENNIFER GARNER... EVERYTHING THAT'S FUN TO KNOW

JENNIFER GARNER...EVERYTHING'S THAT'S FUN TO KNOW - PART 2
22 APRIL 2004. SOURCE: TEEN HOLLYWOOD

More from Jennifer Garner's interview with Teen Hollywood:

Teen Hollywood: Were you more Jena (her character) or Lucy (the ultra-popular girl) growing up?

Jennifer: Oh, Jena to be sure. I'm morel ike Jena except that it wasn't important to me to be part of the cool crowd. It didn't upset me greatly that my group of friends were not considered the coolest, hippest. If you could see pictures of my eighth grade birthday party, we were really, really a motley crew. But we were happy. It didn't bother us. We thought we were cool.

Teen Hollywood: In the movie, Jena is really not so nice when she is 30. What do you think happened to make her that way?

Jennifer: We talked about it so much. We talked about specific incidents, times that might have separated her more and more from her family, that pulled her away more and more from her relationship with Matt (her childhood friend in the film). I just think she did what is so easy to do. She probably made a couple of bad decisions right after her 13th birthday party where she shunned Matt and wouldn't talk to him again. She shunned her parents and latched more onto the Six Chicks (popular girls) as her family and I think once she did that, she probably became ashamed of her behaviour. And so once she was embarrassed, it became easier and easier to separate herself from that instead of going back and apologising and getting closer again to who she was. And the next thing you know, she started to believe that she really was this girl and then she became her.

Teen Hollywood: That's a really good explanation. Did you have a friend like Matt when you were a young teen?

Jennifer: I did actually. I grew up next door to this guy named Danny Moore. He is now married with a couple of kids. He still lives in Charleston and I still see him every time I go home. And Dan and I had this ritual, we called it "porch talk" where every night when we got home from our various things, and then through high school it would be from dates of whatever it was, he would throw rocks or pennies at my window if my light was on, or I would at his window. I would come downstairs or he would and we would sit on the front porch of either house and talk, go through everything. And we were absolute sweetest best of friends and it was always innocent, but I think we probably both did have crushes on each other. He set me up with all of his friends instead and I talked him through his various relationships.

Teen Hollywood: Jena has a lot to regret in this movie. Is there an instant in childhood where you wish you'd made another choice?

Jennifer: So many. There were so many classes at school that I didn't take seriously. I can think of a couple of times where I spoke to a girlfriend, in trying to make myself understood, said the wrong thing and you can't really wish to go back and fix them (mistakes) because then you wouldn't have learned anything from them. But at the same time, if I could just erase anything bad that had ever happened and still have learned from it, then of course I would.

Teen Hollywood: What relationship advice would you give to young girls?

Jennifer: I would tell them just to keep in mind who they are and what they're about, how they see themselves and what they want. And not to give that up to fall in love with what some guy wants because the guy doesn't really know. BACK TO THE TOP