Hollywood actor Jennifer Garner has revealed that she sharply pulled back from acting while raising her three children and worked even less in the aftermath of her separation from Ben Affleck, calling the period a deliberate trade-off between motherhood and a career she now feels grateful to reclaim. Garner, speaking to InStyle, framed the choice as both personal and structural, citing the demands a performance role places on a parent's life.

What Garner said about stepping back

“First of all, when you're in a performance kind of role, you give up a year/year-and-a-half of performance while you are pregnant, having a baby, recovering,” Garner told InStyle. The 13 Going on 30, Juno and Dallas Buyers Club star added: “When my kids were little, I worked so little, and then we had such an upheaval in our family, that I really hardly worked for a long time.”

The Affleck timeline

Garner and Affleck married in 2005 and welcomed their eldest daughter the same year. The couple announced their separation in 2015 and finalised their divorce in 2018, according to reports. Despite the split, the two have remained committed co-parents to Violet, Seraphina and Samuel, and have frequently been photographed together at family events.

Returning to set with 'The Five-Star Weekend'

Reflecting on her latest project, The Five-Star Weekend, Garner described filming with older children at home as a kind of professional reawakening. “To have this year and a half where I just indulged (in acting), because this job is very selfish. It's all about your schedule. It's not about what the kids have going on at school. It's not about pick-ups and drop-offs and making it home for dinner,” she said.

She added that the experience reaffirmed acting as central to her identity: “I relate to that feeling of like, ‘Okay, I gave everything to mothering. I'm still their mom, I'm not going anywhere, I'm still all-in'. I'm also really grateful to have this part of my life back.”

No more guilt over the balance

Garner said she has stopped apologising for the demands of her profession. “I don't apologise to my kids for it,” she said, adding that she instead thanks them for supporting her career while she maintains boundaries that keep her present in their day-to-day lives. She also acknowledged the imperfection of the balancing act: “But that's part of life. Working hard is part of life, and messing up is part of life. Tripping and falling — there's room for all of it.”

With The Five-Star Weekend marking a fuller return to screen, Garner's remarks offer a rare, unvarnished look at how one of Hollywood's most consistent stars recalibrated after a very public separation — and what reclaiming her craft looks like on her own terms.