Jennifer Garner has revealed that she panicked about her financial future after her marriage to Ben Affleck ended, realizing she needed to become financially active again after years of prioritizing motherhood over her Hollywood career.
The 54-year-old actress, who split from the Hollywood star after ten years of marriage, admitted she came to understand then just how far she had stepped back professionally to raise their three children, and feared there was no guarantee that acting work would keep coming her way.
Garner said she panicked when she came out of her marriage and realized how big a step back she had taken in her work. She said she suddenly realized she did not know how much longer she would be able to keep working, explaining that acting is not a career where people tell you, at 60 or 55 or 43, to come and get paid more than ever, since that traditionally is not how the industry works. She made the comments on the "Aspire" podcast.
Garner and Affleck married in June 2005 and have three children together: Violet, 20, Fin, 17, and Samuel, 14. The two actors announced their separation in June 2015, shortly after their tenth wedding anniversary, and their divorce was finalized in 2018.
How the divorce changed her financial outlook
Garner explained that the end of her marriage forced her to look differently at the question of her financial security and to think about how she could keep earning an income without pulling away from her children.
She said she suddenly thought that she had to take care of herself as well as the children, and had to figure out what she was going to do next.
She said that at that point she and her manager began planning her next professional step very carefully, with one non-negotiable condition: that she be able to stay close to home. She recalled her manager asking how she could possibly work under those terms, and said she replied that she could work in Los Angeles but could not leave her children for six months at a stretch each time. She said she would have liked to keep taking on location shoots, which she enjoys, but that was not the phase of her career she was in. She said the two of them started thinking about what they could do and how, and became very targeted in their choices.
Once Upon a Farm's Wall Street debut
One of those choices was Once Upon a Farm, the organic baby food company Garner joined as a co-founder in 2017.
She said Once Upon a Farm was largely part of that plan, and that the crazy thing was it actually worked. The company made its debut on the New York Stock Exchange in February, pricing at $18 a share with a valuation of roughly $724 million.
Referring to the period of financial uncertainty before the company's success, Garner said her public recognizability offered no guarantee of a steady income. She said fame does not simply go away, but life is expensive and you have to find a way to live, and being widely recognized does not mean a large income is waiting somewhere. She said the realization became very serious very quickly for someone who had never thought much about money before, and that she suddenly told herself she had to be the one bringing in money.
A financial advisor's look is enough to worry her
Garner also joked that even today, her longtime financial advisor can convince her she is broke with just a look. She said all he has to do is glance at her a little strangely and she is immediately convinced she has no money left, adding that her real problem is that she gives away too much money.
The photographs accompanying her comments were credited to Shutterstock.
