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OH, BABY!

JENNIFER GARNER MAY BE ONE OF THE MOST FAMOUS ACTRESSES IN THE WORLD, BUT SHE WAS NOT ABOVE TAKING ON A SUPPORTING ROLE IN JUNO. NOW, WITH THE FILM SOARING, SHE COULD WELL BE ON HER WAY TO A NOMINATION.

Where were you born, raised, and educated? And how did your childhood interests lead you to a career as an actress?
Well, I would say the biggest influence on me is being Melissa Garner’s little sister. [laughs] She is a genius, and had straight A’s, was valedictorian, got a perfect SAT score—you know, that kind of person—and she’s really beautiful. And I just had to go another way. So I put all my efforts in our little town into whatever avenues there were to perform, which were mostly with this one ballet teacher who also ran the local community theater. So I did musicals and a ton of ballet. And then, when I went to college, I assumed I would do something normal, and I went into the chemistry major—and realized that my heart was in the theater. And after a semester of just trying to take every theater class I could, my parents said, “You should switch your major. That’s what you want to study, just study it. It’s okay.” And I did, and I loved it so much that every summer I worked for free at any summer stock that I could find, building the sets and making the costumes to be on stage a little bit, or just to be there, and never really having some great goal—I mean, certainly didn’t plan to be talking to you from The Four Seasons in Beverly Hills, you know? [laughs] Never thought about coming to California, or being on film, ever—ever. And then went to visit a friend in New York, and went on a couple of auditions at a backstage, and got two little jobs, and went to an agent who worked with a friend of mine, and said, “What should I do? Do I take these jobs, or do I do this thing I have at Utah Shakespeare?” And she said, “Let me send you on a couple of auditions.” She did; one of them was understudying a Turgenev play at the Roundabout, and I got the job, and I stayed in New York. And that was that.

I’m always interested to know how an actor tackles a part. Some cite the Method; others cite other techniques. How would you describe your approach?
I think it’s a little bit of everything. I really like words, so I’m really interested in just starting there, you know, just with plain old words—that’s why it’s so great to be back doing a classic piece of theater. And then I’m not sure—I work a little bit from the outside-in, a little bit from the inside-out, and I usually write a bunch of stuff, and write kind of a journal for the character. But just different things that work depending on the role.

Speaking of words, the script for Juno stood out to you before anything else about it—can you share what your initial impressions were of the script and of the part of Vanessa Loring? Someone like you could very easily be starring in a movie on your own, but in this case you chose to be part of an ensemble for a reason, and maybe you can articulate why…
I love being part of an ensemble. Pretty much everything I’ve chosen since Alias has ended has been ensemble work—in The Kingdom, and in this. The romantic comedy that I’m doing next has very much the feel of an ensemble, although it’s led by Matthew McConaughey. And I like being part of the community. I mean, it’s fine to be out front, but it’s much nicer to be part of a group. So what I liked about it? I mean, it seems so evident that anyone would trip over themselves to be involved with this movie as soon as they read the screenplay because it’s just so good. [laughs] It’s so good on so many different levels—the words; and this whole vernacular this character creates—of Juno; that she can be such a complete character, and so beautifully drawn; and that the supporting roles have so much going on with them, as well. I mean, so often supporting roles can be stock roles where you know very little, and they’re just there as, kind of, the, you know, pantalone or something to kind of push the story forward, so you don’t need to know a lot about them. But, in this case, I don’t know if I love Allison Janney’s role, or Olivia Thirlby’s role, or my role—all of the women, we all have real people that we’re playing with. And everybody grows up, in their own way, in this movie.

Vanessa goes through maybe the biggest transformation of all, as far as the audience can gauge. In a previous interview, you said you based your characterization of her—as someone who can be cold and controlling, but ultimately means well—on someone who really exists. I don’t necessarily expect you to name who the person is, but can you elaborate on that?
Well, she can come across as cold and controlling, but it isn’t that, really—it’s that it somebody who’s trying to do as good a job as she possibly can, and that that can be read, from the outside, as, “Oh, gosh, look at her! She’s a total control freak.” But, really, to her, she just wants to do right by you. You know what I mean?

And, as far as the basis for the characterization, was there someone that you drew upon?
There were things that I stole, definitely. But you always do, you know? That’s just part of being an actress—observing and stealing from whatever you can get. So, yeah, it definitely gave me a lot of love for this woman from the very beginning, and I was always incredibly sympathetic to her. I never saw her—you know, somebody said to me recently, “Oh, you kind of play the villain.” And I said, “Oh, I never, ever—that’s so interesting you think of it,” ‘cause I never saw her that way. I always saw her as the one struggling to be the grownup, and do the right thing, and this is just something that she doesn’t have control over. And if she did, she would do anything to make this happen.

When you made this film, you had only recently had a child yourself. Did the whole experience make it easier for you to appreciate Vanessa’s burning desire to become a mother? Was it helpful?
Yeah. I mean, my daughter was fourteen months old, and she was toddling around the set, so it’s hard to connect the dots in that way, because it’s so much about desire for something you can’t have, and there was the thing I wanted running around and looking for me between takes, you know? So I was spoiled, in that way. But I could understand, certainly, how a baby would unlock your heart, and how the best version of you could be shown to you only by your child, and kind of reprioritize things for you in a really incredible way.

I have to ask you about what many of us regard as your most moving scene in the film—I’m sure you know what I’m talking about before I even say it—when Vanessa runs into Juno in the mall. It’s sort of the turning point for how the audience feels toward Vanessa. Can you talk about what enabled you to pull that off so well?
Oh—well, thank you. I don’t know what enabled me. I know that, for me, that scene is so important because it’s the first time she’s getting anything back from the baby or from Juno—it’s the first time she feels connected to the possibility of this. I don’t know whether Vanessa wants a baby so badly because she knows how great it’s gonna be for or because she wants to check it off her life list—I think there’s a little bit of both going on there. But this is 100%—this moment—about her heart, and not at all about, “Okay, I’m gonna get these things for the nursery; I’m gonna get this taken care of; I’m gonna be on that of that.” You know what I mean? And I think while it’s totally irrational to think that a baby could be communicating to you and accepting you from just moving around in a tight little womb, that’s what it is to her. To her, that baby is letting her know right then, “I know you’re there. I dig you. We belong together. It’s gonna be okay.”

I hope you can talk about a few of your castmates. I know you came into this with a pre-existing friendship with Jason Bateman, and maybe you can talk about how you met and that evolved. Also, I’d love to hear about your experience working with Michael Cera and Ellen Page before the public had seen their breakthrough roles—in Superbad and, obviously, Juno—and when they still had a little bit of anonymity…
Yeah, I feel for Ellen—I’m afraid her life is gonna change in a pretty crazy way, and I’m sure Michael’s already has. But, well, with Jason, I just love working with him. He makes me laugh. I think he makes every scene that he’s in better. He’s really fun to hang out with while the cameras are being set up, and then, once they’re ready to go, there’s no one more professional or who’s more on top of it—of what’s happening when and where the characters are. And so I really wanted him to do this movie with me and twisted his arm—I didn’t have to twist his arm. [laughs] So that was an easy one, you know? That was great. We definitely work really well together. We have a lot of fun. And, you know, when any of us read the script, it’s the kind of thing where you love it but you think, “God, who are they gonna get to play this role?” She has to be everything; it’s asking a lot of a very young actor. And from the minute that I met Ellen and had my first rehearsal with her—she was very quiet and very reserved, but I could see how much she had in her, because she never seemed to sweat it; she never pushed it; she never seemed to have to try. It just was, like, slipping on a different skin.

In another interview, I read you bumped into the two younger actors at the Vancouver Aquarium during a break from filming Juno. This movie is going to change their lives, but when you saw them, particularly on that occasion, you were struck by something else about them…
Well, they were running around the Aquarium. I never worked with Michael—now, I have to be among his biggest fans, although I’m sure he has many—but he, in this movie, to me, is so heartbreaking. He was great in Superbad, and hysterical, and he’s such a good actor. But, in this movie, ahh—I just fall totally in love with him. He reminds me of everything good about high school boys—and that’s hard to do. [laughs] But running into them that day? I don’t know. She said, “Oh, I want to introduce you to Michael Cera. He’s in the movie.” [laughs] And I said, “Oh! Hi, how are you? I hear you’re great.” [laughs] And I guess we were being chased—I don’t even remember. But, yeah, I remember seeing them—but we were chasing after a toddler, so that was the main difference in our lives. But they were just this pack of kids out just having a good time, and we were this family being chased by paparazzi, trying to run after our toddler. We were at different points in our lives in so many different ways.

I’m fascinated with our society’s obsession with celebrity, and moreover how it impacts the people who it forces to live their lives under a microscope—unfortunately, I guess, something you’ve experienced. I hope you can share, just on a human level, how it feels to have your parenting, or your relationship, or your private life constantly photographed and dissected by strangers. It’s got to have an emotional impact…
Well, what it does is it forces you to live underground. I mean, I just do a lot less in the world than I would. So nobody does really see my life; they just see me getting from one place to another. And there are times where, I mean, I hate it so much—but nobody really wants to hear somebody in my position complain. So all that I hate about is that what they want is my child—they stalk children of celebrities—and that that’s become a business of its own, and that we have no laws in this country protecting children and fuzzing their faces out in magazines, like they do in France. That, to me, is appalling, but it’s not where I’m gonna put my energy. So does that answer your question?

Your performance has generated a lot of Oscar buzz. I know it’s something you may not be comfortable talking about, but what would that outcome represent to you and your career? It’s got to be a mix of emotions…
I think that I will take pleasure in the conversation of it and not really, you know, go past that in my head or in my heart. [laughs] And I’ll just be thrilled that you even said that sentence to me, and say thank you very much.