Actress Jennifer Garner is looking back at the intense, high-risk surveillance her family faced during the peak of tabloid culture. Appearing on the Shut Up Evan podcast, the 54-year-old star shared candid details about the aggressive tactics photographers used to capture images of her and her three children Violet, Seraphina, and Samuel during her marriage to ex-husband Ben Affleck. Garner described the relentless chase as a widespread safety hazard that went far beyond typical celebrity attention.
Reflecting on her kids’ early years, Garner outlined several alarming scenarios where photographers routinely put her family and bystanders in physical danger:
Traffic Violations and Lawn Driving: Photographers frequently ran red lights and drove onto residential lawns or hillsides to follow her car.
School Disruptions: Aggressive crowds of photographers knocked over young children outside preschool entrances.
Blocked Medical Care: Photographers physically obstructed the entrance to her children’s pediatrician office.
Sports League Removal: Her family was asked to leave a local youth soccer league because the constant arrival of 20+ paparazzi vehicles created too much disruption for the community.
Garner noted that while major stars like Ben Affleck and Matt Damon lived on her street, photographers singled her out because she was moving around with the kids on a daily basis.
Garner, who helped champion California’s anti-paparazzi legislation alongside Halle Berry in 2013, revealed that two dedicated photographers still follow her daily routine over two decades later.
Describing a complex, long-term relationship with her primary photographer that she compares to a mild form of “Stockholm syndrome,” Garner admitted that while she has called the police on him countless times to maintain personal space, a strange familiarity has developed over the years. In one instance, during an unsettling encounter with an unknown stalker, she even turned to her longtime paparazzo for physical protection.
