Actor Jennifer Garner has opened up about just how disturbing it can be to be hounded by paparazzi—not just for her and her family but for everyone around them.
During a recent appearance on the Shut Up Evan podcast, the Alias star described just how far the paps have been willing to go to get photos of her and her kids with ex Ben Affleck.
It's caused such a dangerous ruckus over the years that she told host Evan Ross Katz that she and her family have been asked to leave certain events and activities for the safety of others.
Garner and Halle Berry successfully lobbied the California state government in 2013 to pass a law protecting children from the invasions of paparazzi photographers.
Garner's children are now in high school and college, but she told Katz that when they were younger it was a nightmare, especially before the law was passed.
She told Katz:
"...[I]t was totally ludicrous. And it felt like ‘Poor little me, my poor little kids who have everything in the world,’ but it was a danger to everyone around us."
As an example she described how being hounded and followed while driving endangered not only her and her family but their teammates at soccer games.
So much so that the soccer association asked them to stop coming.
“If I went through a yellow light, 15 cars would go through the red behind me. They would drive up onto people’s lawns, even on a hillside."
"We were trying to have our little one play soccer, and the association asked us to stop because there were 20 cars coming [to the games]."
She went on to describe how even going to the pediatrician was an ordeal, and that her kids and their friends and classmates are the ones who suffered most.
“If you show up and you’re trying to get into the pediatrician and you have a sick kid on your shoulder and you’re scared and you can’t get into the door because you’re blocked by photographers, there’s something wrong with that."
"And the kids are paying the price. Kids were getting knocked over coming out of preschool by photographers who were so hungry to get to me or to Ben, trying to get to our kids.”
On social media, many people were appalled by the lengths the paparazzi will go to for a simple photograph of a celebrity.
Garner says things are now much more low-key, but the invasion hasn't stopped.
She explained to Katz that she is followed every day by two photographers in particular who have been assigned to document her for nearly 25 years.
It's been such a long-running thing that she explained something of a relationship has formed between her and the photographers, and that they've even helped her during moments of distress a time or two, which she described as something akin to "Stockholm Syndrome." Certainly a bizarre existence!
Garner is not shrinking from her job because of it, however. She is currently starring in The Five Star Weekend and producing an upcoming reboot of 13 Going on 30 set to appear on Netflix.

























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