Jennifer Garner feels she’s 53 going on… 53.
The actress got candid on self-love and why at this stage in her life, she’s not looking to be any younger.
When asked by Harper’s Bazzar in an interview published on Friday, what age she feels like in her head, Garner quipped: “I don’t know!”
“Part of me is, like, really 53 because I’ve really earned every minute of every day of every year. I don’t want to be younger,” she confessed. “I’m very grateful to be exactly this age. I’m trying to soak it up. I feel like I’m living in my power. I’m living in my wisdom. I’m living in my joy and my capacity to do and get things done. So I’m just very aware of my luck and the grace that’s been shown to me.”
Garner, who is mom to kids Violet, 19, Seraphina Rose, 16, and Samuel, 13, with ex-husband Ben Affleck, added that as she’s gotten older, there are more aspects of her physical appearance that she loves.
“Part of the gift of being my mother’s daughter is that I haven’t spent a lot of time stressing about my physical appearance,” the “13 Going on 30” alum admitted. “I don’t spend a lot of time in the mirror. Sometimes I could spend more time in the mirror; I’m sure I’ve had things in my teeth or a bump in my hair.”
“So there are pluses and minuses to it. If you look through, like, the last 20-plus years of paparazzi pictures of me, you would see images and say, ‘You would be best served by spending more time thinking about what you look like.’”
As the years go by, Garner, who’s been in front of the camera since landing a part on the drama “Felicity” in 1998, has given herself grace.
“But the flip side of that is that I’m not really that stressed about aging or things changing,” she stressed. “I have my moments, of course, where I’ll look in the monitor at work and be like, ‘Who is that? Ah, that’s me!’ But I think less is more, as far as focusing on yourself too much in that way.”
“What are you going to do?” Garner continued. “I want to age. I want to live to be 100. I don’t expect to look at 100 like I look today. I want to wear every single bit of those 100 years and feel great about them. But what do I like better about myself? Well, I don’t know that I used to think about it at all, but I’m more friendly to myself in general.”
As for what the “Family Switch” star swears by, she says: sunscreen.
“Sunscreen ages well,” said Garner. “My dermatologist friend Doris Day says nothing looks better in your 50s than sunscreen in your 20s. And as someone who was not a sunbather in my 20s—I just didn’t have that patience—I luckily did wear sunscreen. I can tell you, the products have only gotten better, every single iteration, every single year, and I’m grateful for them now that I’m in my 50s.”
One thing Garner isn’t diving into for the time being is cosmetic procedures. Instead, she’s opting for good skincare – much like products from her longtime partnership with Neutrogena.
“Well, I don’t judge whatever makes anyone look or feel their best,” she told the outlet. “I haven’t needed it yet, but I can’t say that I haven’t said to doctors before, ‘Do I need to do this?’ And I’ve had really nice doctors who have just been like, ‘No.’ So, God only knows 10 years from now what the conversation will be. I’m not there yet.”
Garner added, “But as far as injectables go, I think just find somebody fantastic and proceed with caution. I don’t do a ton, and Botox doesn’t work very well for me; that’s why I wear bangs a lot. I like to be able to move my forehead, and it’s such a big part of my face. I have, like, a five-head.”
These days, what keeps the “Alias” vet feeling good in her skin is “working out with people who are younger and more fit than I am.”
And the best part of aging is simple for Garner. As she put it, “Growing older is the best! It’s like you’re more confident and you worry less. I had no idea how much I was going to love having teenagers. They’re just so smart and funny. They make me laugh, and they’re so sweet. “
Although sometimes, there are those every day teenage tifs.
Last month, in an academic research paper that Violet wrote for Yale University’s Global Health Review, the college student detailed some opposing views she has with Garner.
The mother-daughter duo had different reactions to the Pacific Palisades fires, with Garner being stunned and Violet feeling that due to climate change, it was inevitable.
“I spent the January fires in Los Angeles arguing with my mother in a hotel room,” Violet penned.
According to the essay, Garner “was shell-shocked, astonished at the scale of destruction in the neighborhood where she raised myself and my siblings.”
“I was surprised at her surprise: as a lifelong Angelena and climate-literate member of generation Z, my question had not been whether the Palisades would burn but when,” Violet wrote.
During the wildfires, Garner volunteered with the World Central Kitchen and revealed that a friend who she knew through church died in the blaze.
“I feel almost guilty walking through my house,” she said at the time.
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