Jennifer Garner’s Favorite Role? ‘Summer Jen’

For most of the year, actress Jennifer Garner is in work mode. But summer has a way of making her slow down and lean into time at home.

Jennifer Garner is in her happy place. Shooting for the Better Homes & Gardens July/August cover in April, the actress settles into a teeming garden down the street from her Brentwood house in L.A. Back home, Jen’s garden, its design inspired by her childhood memories growing up in West Virginia, is equally lush with blossoming plants: potatoes, eggplants, sugar snap peas, tomatoes. Not to mention her fruit trees, which are currently “going off” with plums, peaches, cherries, and apricots. Nestled just outside her kitchen, her garden produces a bounty that constantly makes Jen feel joyful. “If I’m really home all day, I am cooking for people,” says the mom of Violet, 20; Fin, 17; and Sam, 14, whom she shares with ex-husband Ben Affleck. “Because that’s what everyone wants.”

“Summer is afternoon light. Summer is bright green. Summer is garden roses and lavender growing everywhere. I have so many fruit trees. Every year my cherry tree grows one perfect cherry; this year I’m hoping for two.”

— Jennifer Garner

Her ideal weekend starts early. Bread dough rising on the counter (though she admits she still hasn’t had time to tackle sourdough). Coffee steaming beside her as she sits outside, listening to the morning birds. At some point, sleepy teenagers make their way into the kitchen, lured by the aroma of whatever their mom has decided to bake before dawn.

If there’s “any kind of snap in the air,” Jen lights a fire and goes over her to-do lists in the bound paper planner she carries with her everywhere. Later, there might be friends dropping by or a meal packed up for an elderly neighbor. And if the day unfolds just right? “It would include getting in the pool with the kids at night and chatting and looking at a crescent moon,” she says.

The scene sounds almost cinematic, but Jen describes it without any airs or pretense. Whether audiences were first drawn to her as the fearless spy Sydney Bristow on Alias, in beloved films like 13 Going on 30 and Dallas Buyers Club, or through her flour-covered self-deprecation in her Pretend Cooking Show on Instagram, the actress—who says, “Just call me Jen” by way of introduction—remains the rare star who seems less like a celebrity and more like someone we already know.

Career Jen

During especially demanding stretches in her career, Jen’s kitchen becomes a pathway back into family life. This year alone she’s produced and starred in the second season of the hit Apple TV thriller The Last Thing He Told Me, served on the board of the international nonprofit Save the Children, and taken Once Upon a Farm—a company she cofounded in 2017 that makes organic snacks and meals for babies and kids—public. “When I’m working, I can almost feel like a visitor in the house,” she says. “I’m gone before [the kids] are awake. I give them a kiss when I come home. I might have dinner with them, and then I’m like, ‘I’m so sorry, I have to learn lines and go to bed.’”

“I feel like I’m usually kind of the buzzkill—‘sorry, I’m busy.’ But if I’m home and there is free time, I will find time for my ladies. It may be like 6 in the morning, but I will see my friends.”

— Jennifer Garner

Those intense periods leave her craving ordinary moments. “There’s something very healing for me about them waking up to cinnamon bread or bagels,” she says. “This morning I had French toast waiting for them and music playing. They were like: ‘OK, Mom. We see you. You’re back.’”

Jen’s innate ability to foster comfort came in handy for her latest role in The Five Star Weekend, a new Peacock series based on Elin Hilderbrand’s bestselling novel. The actress stars as Hollis Shaw, a “chef-fluencer” who brings together four friends from her past for a luxurious weekend as her world unravels beneath the pressure of grief and reinvention.

“I feel like the projects that are meant for me are the ones that come my way,” the actress says. “So it’s usually pretty clear what I should lean into and what is not going to be best suited for me.” Playing Hollis “was the most clear, loud, screaming ‘Yes’ you could imagine. The only problem with it was: Am I too close to this character?”

Certain elements of the part did feel immediately familiar: Hollis’ passion for cooking and going the extra mile for loved ones, for example. But Jen maintains the goings-on in her own kitchen are significantly less refined. Hollis is “more stylish than I am,” Jen says. “Naturally she’s more organized than I am. She’s a pretty baker, and I’m a messy baker.” Still, “I might be a messier cook, but [Hollis] has a messier life.”

Home Jen

Jen’s own life unfolds in every corner of her house, designed to marry rustic warmth with modern luxury for a lived-in feel. Her favorite spot in the house changes regularly: her kitchen, the outdoor spaces, her bedroom, the office. “I really try to use a lot of the space,” she says. With the home’s rear facade and combination kitchen-breakfast room opening to the pool deck, Jen wanted to cultivate spaces where people can exhale: “My house is very ‘sit-able’ and cozy,” she says. “I built this house, and each area is like its own little conversation area. I can have a big gathering, but even those [spaces] have a little window seat or a way to tuck away. It’s interesting to see how groups migrate from one spot to another.”

Her favorite kind of entertaining is the union of “super comfortable” with a “fancy caterer.” (Jen’s even been known to mandate guests wear sweats or pajamas, “and your hair has to be in a ponytail or scrunchie. You cannot come in skinny jeans.”) Despite the actress’ hosting prowess, Jen insists she’s “never been somebody who’s been at the center of a social group. The only place where I truly have a tribe is on set because I’ve worked with the same group of people for 25 years. And I’m just one of the cogs in the wheel. We roll onto a new production and we’re like, ‘What’s up?’”

As her children have grown older, Jen’s definition of tribe has shifted as well. “You don’t have that thing that you have [when your kids are] in elementary school or preschool that keeps you together for so long,” she allows. She’s also adjusting to her oldest, Violet, leaving the nest for college—and what a house feels like when your kids begin to launch. “We miss her a lot,” Jen says. “When Violet calls or FaceTimes, we’re all crowded around the phone.” But the actress finds beauty in watching the sibling dynamic shift: “I remember when my big sister left, my little sister and I connected in a different way. My mom and I connected in a different way,” she says. “I see that happening [with Fin and Sam], and there’s sweetness in that.”

For Mother’s Day this year, Jen asked her kids for something simple: to pile into the upstairs reading nook (complete with stained-glass windows that depict illustrations) and let her read aloud from their favorite childhood books one more time. “They’re like, ‘Mom,’” she says. “And I’m like, ‘I know, but I think I need that. You have to let me.’”

What she hopes they carry with them into their own homes someday is not a perfectly curated childhood but a feeling. “I hope they value humor,” Jen says. “Laughing your way through it, loving people through it, finding what’s funny. And I hope they take music and books [with them].” And cooking, naturally. “If you’ve grown up watching people do it, and you’re used to home-cooked food, then that’s what you will want to provide for yourself. And for other people.”

Rooted Jen

Jen’s own instinct to nurture traces back generations to her family’s small farm in Locust Grove, OK, where her mom, Patricia, grew up in a tiny house with no running water. Jen now helps oversee the property alongside her aunt and uncle, who grow produce they donate to local food banks. “[The organizers] are so happy to have this gorgeous fresh produce show up,” Jen says. “When Uncle Robert and Aunt Janet bring food in, it’s gone like that.”

That philosophy—making fresh food accessible and communal—ultimately led Jen to Once Upon a Farm. But unlike acting, she had to find her comfort zone as an entrepreneur. “It all feels very connected to [my work with] Save the Children, which is lovely,” she says. Once Upon a Farm was founded on “the mission to … make nutrition more accessible and democratize a higher level of nutrition for all kids,” she says. “And we are completely devoted to that mission. It runs through every single facet of the company.”

Growing up in Charleston, WV, she was first inspired watching her mother care for Jen and her two sisters. “My mom made every bite of food that went into my mouth,” Jen recalls. Her parents—her dad, William, died in 2024—“were not judgmental,” she says. “They met people assuming the best, assuming they will love them and receive love from them. I think that’s a gift.” Her mother also passed along one of Jen’s most useful life skills: “If you mess up, if you got out of shape, if you burned something, if you forgot to pick your kid up—which I did the other day—just say, ‘Whoops,’” Jen explains. “Get past beating yourself up as quickly as possible. It doesn’t help.”

Today the actress is practicing that grace in real time. “You can’t live a balanced life day to day,” she says. “But you can if you look at it through seasons.” Jen’s best advice for bringing more joy into life is deceptively simple: “Be nice to yourself,” she says. As her mom asked her recently during a stressful moment: “‘A year from now, will this matter?’”

“You can’t do everything,” Jen says of having help tending to her plants. “Sometimes do I get in there and do it myself? Of course, and I love it. I go in and I’m like, ‘Look at my garden!’ But if I’m working, I’ll play in [the garden] on the weekends and act like I’ve done it all.”

— Jennifer Garner

For now, there is food to make, a friend to call, a garden to tend, a reading nook she hopes her kids will never outgrow, and a house full of ordinary moments worth cherishing. Even if she can’t yet cross sourdough bread off her to-do list.