ctress Jennifer Garner is probably best known as Sydney Bristow, the chameleon-like, secret-agent star of the hit television series Alias, but on April 23 audiences worldwide saw her in a new and altogether different role: a teenage girl.
In 13 Going on 30, Garner plays Jenna Rink, an insecure 13-year-old whose birthday wish to grow up magically comes true. Waking up to a lifestyle she only dreamed about, Jenna seeks out childhood pal Matt (Mark Ruffalo) to help sort through the details of her 17-year leap and discover the person she has become—at 30.
Garner, along with co-star Mark Ruffalo (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), sat down with Science Fiction Weekly for a conversation about their latest project. The film, which was written by Cathy Yuspa and Josh Goldsmith (the team responsible for What Women Want) and directed by Tadpole helmer Gary Winick, was released nationwide by Columbia Pictures on April 23.
Do you approach comedy scenes similarly to action scenes?
Garner: Yeah, in that you have to commit to it. You can't hide in an action scene. You can't think, "Oh, I'll halfway do this," and you can't hide in a comedy scene either. You have to give in to the scene and commit.
Are the risks similar?
Garner: The risk is always being over the top, in my mind. That was something that Gary [Winick, the director] and I worked really hard on together, to try to walk a line of having fun with it but also be honest and truthful, because something isn't funny if there isn't a bit of honesty, but at the same time, it has to be funny. Honesty is also kind of sitting and staring into space, but you don't want to do that either.
Did they come to you, or did you go after this?
Garner: They actually came to me, which was new for me.
Was it difficult to get into a 13-year-old mindset?
Garner: If you were to hang out on the set of Alias, you would very quickly agree with the cast and crew that I'm 30 when the camera is rolling and 13 when they say cut. I think all of us have our inner 13-year-old a lot closer to the surface than we're willing to admit, even to ourselves. I think we can all pretty quickly, if put in the right situation, go back to feeling like, "Oh gosh, I don't know, should I have worn this, I feel like I shouldn't have eaten that." She, for me, is pretty close to the surface, so I drew from my own life, my own experience, and also the sleepover [with the daughters of the producers]. That was more of a reminder that 13-year-olds are smart and sophisticated and capable of having any kind of adult conversation, and then they flip and surprise you by being children and goofy and dramatic. So it was constantly making sure that I didn't go too far in any one direction.
What happened to Jena between 13 and 30 to turn her into such a bitch?
Garner: We talked about it so much. We talked about specific incidents with Matt or with Tom-Tom, Judy [Greer]'s character, or times that separated her more and more from her family, that pulled her away more and more from her relationship with Matt. I just think she did what is so easy to do—she probably made a couple of bad decisions right after her 13th birthday party, where she shunned Matt and wouldn't talk to him, and where she shunned her parents and latched more onto the [popular crowd]. I think once she did that she probably became ashamed of her behavior. And so, once she was embarrassed, it became easier and easier to separate herself from that, instead of going back and apologizing and getting closer to who she was, and the next thing you know she started to believe that she really was this girl—and then she became her.
Were you more like your character in the movie, or like the popular girls Jenna wants to hang out with?
Garner: Oh, Jenna for sure. I'm more like Jenna, except that it wasn't important to me to be part of the cool crowd. It didn't upset me greatly that my group of friends were not considered the coolest, hippest. If you have pictures of my eighth-grade birthday party, we were really, really a motley crew, but we were happy. It didn't bother us—we thought we were cool.
Did you have a best male friend like Matt when you were a teenager?
Garner: I did, actually. I grew up next door to this guy named Danny Moore. He still lives in Charleston, and I still see him every time I go home. And Dan and I had this ritual, we called it porch talk, where every night when we got home from our various things, he would throw rocks or pennies at my window if my light was on, or I would at his window. I would come downstairs or he would and we would sit on the front porch of either house and talk about everything. And we were absolute sweetest best of friends, and it was always innocent—we probably both did have crushes on each other but we never [did anything]. He set me up with all of his friends instead, and I talked him through his various relationships.
Do you keep in touch with many of your friends from your teenage years?
Garner: Oh, of course. A couple was just staying at my house that was one of my friends when I was little. My best friend is somebody that I grew up dancing with—she lives in Atlanta and I talk to her. I'm still really close with everyone at home and their parents. And their brothers and sisters. I was so, so, so lucky to grow up as part of a community, and I don't take that for granted. I try very hard to stay part of it.
How do you feel like kids have changed since you were 13?
Garner: They were sophisticated then, but they still were incredibly innocent. I hung out with girls in West Virginia as well that were 13, because I went home right before I started the movie, and I think that they have so much available to them now. They can stay in constant contact with each other, they can get on the Internet and find anything out—I mean, all the obvious things. But at the core, I think they still pretty much feel the same. I feel bad for them, that there is such an overwhelming amount of options in sitting-on-your-butt entertainment. It makes it harder and harder, I think, to rev up and be part of a soccer team or be on the swim team or whatever it is, the stuff that actually builds who you are.
Were you cast before Mark Ruffalo became involved?
Garner: I was, and the movie took a leap for me when Mark Ruffalo was cast.
Did you play a part in the filmmakers' picking him for the role?
Garner: The second they breathed his name, I said please, please, please, yes, yes, yes. If you would've said five years ago, if you could work with five actors, who would they be, he would have been number one. He's a dream of a person, a fantastic actor and he's just so fun to hang out with. Talk about grounded, he's really the bee's knees.
Mark, how tough was it to develop the idea that your childhood best friend was relying on you to put together her memories for the past 17 years?
Ruffalo: It was impossible. It's so outrageous, and they really didn't give me a lot to work with there, writing-wise, so hopefully we get through it fast enough that we don't lose the audience. I was just keeping him in shock, too, so we didn't have to go into it too much.
How did you and Jennifer develop your relationship with one another?
Ruffalo: We did a lot of rehearsals, which you don't get to do a lot in this type of movie, and we were always talking, finding different ways to modulate it. Some of that was improvised, and that was one way that we found to get into it—to make it kind of plausible.
You have the best line in the movie—"playing 'spin the rapist.'" How do you deliver something like that line and still keep it appropriate for a young audience?
Ruffalo: That's a great line. My belief about acting is that it's one foot on a banana peel and the other one in the grave. People say funny things all the time during really serious moments in life—it happens a lot. So, I just play it as truthfully as possible and hope people get it, and they are with you enough to drop into the humor of it for a moment.
Do you have an alternate path you wish you'd taken when you were a teen?
Ruffalo: I lit up a huge field on fire when I was a kid. I was throwing a lit match at my brother and missed him and hit the grass. It burnt down this marshland [laughs]. I almost burned my neighbor's house down.
So you were a teen pyromaniac?
Ruffalo: I was the pariah of the neighborhood. They wanted to crucify me, basically. But I felt really badly about [the fire]. I went and turned myself in, actually. I probably would have done that a little differently [laughs].
How did you relate to Sean Marquette, the kid who played you at 13?
Ruffalo: I didn't meet him until after. They shot [his scenes] after I did all my stuff. But I got to see the movie the other night, and I thought he did a great job. He really makes my job a lot easier for the later part of the film, because you care about him. He's a sweet kid.
Were you as nerdy as him when you were that age?
Ruffalo: I was worse than him. I mean, I didn't have his self-confidence. That character has a really great possession of himself, great self-confidence. He doesn't care that they're making fun of him dancing. I really admire him. I didn't have that kind of self-confidence.
Are you still friends with anyone you knew at 13 or 14?
Ruffalo: Yeah, a small handful of people. We moved away when I was 15. I started a whole new life. I have a couple of friends still from Virginia Beach. My sister was living there, so I see my friends, but we don't keep a tight correspondence.
How do you keep in touch with how you felt as a teen?
Ruffalo: I look at what kids have as input these days and, man, that's intense stuff. They're ironic little kids. I enjoyed growing up in Virginia Beach. We had the ocean and the beach and a beautiful landscape, outdoors all the time, and we played outside. There was a lot to do. I really cherish that time. I remember riding my bike down the boardwalk with nowhere to go and looking at the girls. It was really innocent.
We hear you weren't thrilled having to dance in this film.
Ruffalo: The dancing was horrible! I almost didn't want to do this movie. I literally read it, and I'm like, "I can't do this movie. I can't get up and do those scenes." When [Jennifer] dragged me out [onto the dance floor], she was literally dragging me out. I had hours of rehearsal with a dance coach who taught me how to do all the moves and stuff, and still, when we got into actually shooting it and there were 300 extras around, I did not want to do that scene.
Was the dancing more of an ordeal than your nude scenes in In the Cut?
Ruffalo: Yeah [laughs]. I don't dance. Ever.
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Terry Bisson
