Actress Jennifer Garner gets candid about her divorce from Ben Affleck in a lengthy cover feature for Vanity Fair’s April 2016 issue.
In a lengthy interview, the magazine delved deep into Garner’s marriage to the “Batman v Superman” star, including allegations of cheating.
“No one needs to hate him for me. I don’t hate him,” she said in the interview. “Certainly we don’t have to beat the guy up. Don’t worry–my eyes were wide open during the marriage. I’m taking good care of myself.”
Below are five takeaways from the interview.
1. She doesn’t blame the nanny
While the media zeroed in on Affleck and Garner’s nanny, Christine Ouzounian, as a possible source for the breakup, Garner was quick to shut it down.
“Let me just tell you something,” she told the interviewer. “We had been separated for months before I ever heard about the nanny. She had nothing to do with our decision to divorce. She was not a part of the equation. Bad judgment? Yes. It’s not great for your kids for [a nanny] to disappear from their lives.”
2. She sees herself as culpable in the breakup
“I’m a pretty hard worker. It’s one of the pains in my life that something I believe in so strongly I’ve completely failed at twice,” she said, referencing her first marriage to Scott Foley, which ended after two years. “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.”
3. She doesn’t like Affleck’s new tattoo
Affleck tattooed a gigantic phoenix rising from the ashes that spans his entire back, and Garner poked a little fun at it.
“You know what we would say in my hometown about that? ‘Bless his heart.’ A phoenix rising from the ashes,” she said. Am I the ashes in this scenario? I take umbrage. I refuse to be the ashes.”
4. She still thinks Affleck is the love of her life, but…
Garner said she would marry Affleck all over again, but didn’t hesitate to throw some shade at her soon-to-be-ex-husband.
“I would go back and remake that decision. I ran down the beach to him, and I would again,” she said of her wedding. “You can’t have these three babies and so much of what we had. He’s the love of my life. What am I going to do about that? He’s the most brilliant person in any room, the most charismatic, the most generous. He’s just a complicated guy. I always say, ‘When his sun shines on you, you feel it.’ But when the sun is shining elsewhere, it’s cold. He can cast quite a shadow.”
5. Everybody loves her
The interview includes lengthy gushing quotes from Garner’s past collaborators, from Victor Garber, who officiated her wedding and is her daughter’s godfather, to Matthew McConaughey and Steve Carell.
“That experience was one of the greatest we’ve ever had,” Garber said of marrying Garner and Affleck. “As difficult as this time is, as sad as this time is, I think there is a great love between them, and that will always be there.”
And eager suitors are already lining up to date her now that she’s single. Garner recalled a time when a fellow airplane passenger got up the courage to ask her out.
“I had to remind myself that that was something that could happen,” she said. “He said, ‘Could I take you for a cup of coffee?’ And I was like, ‘No! You may not take me for a cup of coffee, sir.’ And then I said, ‘But thanks for asking.’ ”