Jennifer Garner Admitted She Was the ‘Most Annoying’ After Moving to New York

Jennifer Garner said she was extremely annoying to other people when she first moved to New York. Here's why New Yorkers thought she was strange.

Jennifer Garner came from humble roots. The Southern girl aspired to break into acting but never wanted to lose sight of her family values, especially during her marriage to Ben Affleck. Jennifer once explained how she was the “most annoying” person to others when she moved to New York, as she wasn’t used to how others treated each other in the big city. Here’s what she said.

Jennifer Garner said she was ‘annoying’ to others when she moved to New York

Jennifer Garner didn’t grow up in the big city. She grew up as the middle Garner sister in West Virginia. Family was always the most important aspect of her life. Her mother, Patricia Garner, taught Jennifer, Melissa, and Susannah the value of hard work, and the sisters didn’t place much value on their physical beauty.

“I feel so fortunate to have grown up in a place where people look out for each other,” Jennifer told Southern Living. “Community is the one thing people crave most, and it’s hard to come by. I grew up with such an excess of it that now wherever I go, the first thing I do is build my group.”

In 2016, Garner spoke to Vanity Fair about how different she was from other New Yorkers when she moved to the Northeast.

“Where I come from in West Virginia, anybody you pass in the car, you wave to and smile and say hello,” Garner explained. “And I actually think that that is how we should operate in the world. I like to say hello to people. … And so when I first moved to New York, I didn’t know that everybody didn’t do that with everyone they met. And I was the most annoying, fresh-off-the-bus kid because I would walk down and say, ‘Hi, good afternoon, hello, how are you, hello, nice to see you, have a good day.'”

She felt ‘the stress’ of becoming more notable in Hollywood and attaining fame

Jennifer Garner wanted to pursue acting but didn’t want fame to invade her privacy. When she and Ben Affleck married in 2005, she said she felt “the stress” of the paparazzi daily. Her stress became worse when she had children.

“It’s startling to become recognizable,” Garner told CBS Sunday Morning in 2019. “It’s startling, shocking.”

“There was a solid decade where there were five or six cars minimum, and easily 15 or 20 on the weekends, outside of my house at all times,” she continued. “Looking back on that, I really feel the stress of it. I could cry talking about it.”

While speaking to Southern Living, Garner said that it was “really important” that her kids understand that they live unusual lives in LA. “I want them to grow up with the Southern values I had — to look at people when they say hello and to stop and smell the roses,” she said. “If I could do half as good a job as my mom did, I’d be pretty happy.”

Jennifer Garner said she was a ‘pretty hard worker’ when it came to her marriage to Ben Affleck

Jennifer Garner understands the value of hard work. While she fought for a successful career in Hollywood while maintaining privacy in her personal life, she also called herself a “pretty hard worker” regarding her marriage to Ben Affleck. While she and Affleck split after 10 years of marriage, they maintain a friendship in 2024.

“It’s one of the pains in my life that something I believe in so strongly I’ve completely failed at twice,” she told Vanity Fair in 2016, referencing her failed marriages to Affleck and Scott Foley. “You have to have two people to dance a marriage. My heart’s a little on the tender side right now, and it’s always easier to focus on the ways that you feel hurt. But I know that, with time and some perspective, I’ll have a clearer sense of where I let the system down because there’s no way I get off in this.”

For more on the entertainment world and exclusive interviews, follow Showbiz Cheat Sheet’s Instagram.