Jennifer Garner tears up as she recalls the humble beginnings of her acting career.
Garner talked about her start in show business during an appearance at Josh Smith’s Great chat show podcast.
She recalled her first showbiz-related job, when she earned $150 a week as an understudy on Broadway, working with the likes of Helen Mirren and F. Murray Abraham.
“It was such a surprise to me that I was studying a play on Broadway. I thought this was a success, and when it did, I would have said, ‘I have to do this,'” she said.
The 13 Going on 30 star continued: “I got to watch Helen Mirren every night. And suddenly I was on set and I was like, ‘I can’t believe I’m here.'”
She added, “And that’s how I felt the whole time. In a way the surprise has always been greater than my actual dreams…’
This led to her first feature film role in 1997 Washington Square, in which she played a small role alongside Jennifer Jason Leigh, Judy Ivey, Albert Finney and Maggie Smith.
“It was this beautiful Henry James novel and I had a very small role. I really didn’t know what I was doing, but I went to the first ADR and I had never done it before. They taught me how to do it,” Garner recalls.
She was staying on her friend’s kitchen floor at the time.
“Claudia, my friend, was visiting from London, and she was living on a boat on the Thames with her boyfriend at the time while I was living on the kitchen floor and we went to look at it,” Garner recalls.
“And there I am on a real screen with Albert Finney and Maggie Smith, and we left that little ADR session and we went running down Broadway screaming, jumping up and down,” she added.
“I’m crying just thinking about it. We were like, ‘Oh my God, what happened? How am I in this? How is this happening?’ And we celebrated it in the fullest, full-body way. And we were talking about it last night, how magical that exact moment together was,” she gushed.
