I’ve always thought it was a little weird that Alias co-stars Jennifer Garner and Victor Garber are so close. He seems to be something of a mentor/surrogate father/best friend to Garner, he one of the few friends that The Garner-Affleck’s invited to their wedding, and he often gives quotes to the press on their behalf. So, of course, Garber chimed in about the newest addition to the family Affleck, little Seraphina Rose Elizabeth. Garber also announced to OK! that he’s going to meet the baby very soon – he’s now like a surrogate grandfather!
Jennifer Garner’s former Alias co-star and close friend Victor Garber will finally be seeing the actress’ new baby today!
The Juno star and husband Ben Affleck, who just had baby daughter Seraphina Rose on Jan. 6, have invited Victor to see the newborn, he said at the NBC party on Thursday night.
“I’m going to see the baby tomorrow,” Victor, who officiated the couple’s 2005 wedding in the Caribbean, revealed to OK! “I’m very excited. I can’t wait to hold that baby.”
Victor cherishes his friendship with Jen and Ben: “I talk to them all the time. It’s a wonderful time for them and I am so delighted to be with the children of people I love.”
From OK! Magazine
It’s a pleasant surprise that Garber and Garner are truly this close, but it seems like an unconventional way to handle the media. Maybe Garner and Affleck feel more comfortable announcing things through Garber, maybe they think it seems friendlier or more like a family. Anyhoo, I really hope the little girl gets the nickname “Sera” rather than “Phina”. That sounds better, doesn’t it? Victor Garber will meet little Sera soon.
Victor Garber and Jennifer Garner are shown at the premiere of Catch and Release on 1/22/07. Credit: WENN. Here are some photos of Ben Affleck picking up Violet at school yesterday. Credit: Fame.
seems like nicole kidman started a bit of a trend among hollywood babies using rose as a middle name? first her sunday rose, then rebecca romijn’s dolly rebecca rose, now jennifer’s seraphnina rose.
<3 Victor Garner and <3 BenJen.
Man they have some cute progeny.
Jen Garner gives me the creeps.
Yes, her relationship is weird with him, but her entire way of living her life is so contrived and calculating.
She married a guy who helped her get a break in the business, then she divorced her first husband when she met a bigger star (relationship started while she was still married).
While she was getting serious with guy n. 2- she tried to get noticed by Ben, and when she got a date with him she not only dumped guy n. 2, but also made sure he’ll be fired, because it’s not fun to be around a guy you just dumped after meeting a bigger star.
In short, Jen is a heartless bitch who would do whatever it takes to get ahead in life, including getting pragnant after a couple of dates to make sure the guy won’t run away, especially after she found out that the guy has an issue with fathers leaving their children and wife, and knew he would be under a bigger pressure than the normal guy to stay with her.
I love Jen Garner and her family. They are the cutest and most sane-seeming Hollywood couple out there. It doesn’t strike me as weird at all that Jen is so close to Victor Garber. He played her father on Alias and was in every episode, so they spent a lot of time together during that period of her life. Let’s not forget that Alias was Jen’s breakthrough as a major star and that she was rather young and unknown back then, while Victor Garber was already an experienced and well-known actor. It’s very likely that he did teach her a lot of things she is grateful for today and that he took her under his wing a bit. Anybody should be so lucky as to have a mentor and friend like that, nothing weird about it at all.
I’m wishing them all the best with little Seraphina and I’m sure Victor will have a blast meeting her.
That is some serious Jen hating there Ned.
A lot of people make mistakes for their first marriage, not that it makes it ok, or justifies, but like, she is, afterall, human.
Victor Garber is gay! They are like BFF´s , nth weird about that!
Hey Ned, do you believe everything you read in the tabloids? If you do, you are very naive and pathetic. You are just a hater and obviously a Michael Vartan or JLo fan.
Ned’s comments are laughable. Sound like jealous rantings, nothing more. Ben didn’t help Jen get a break in the business. She was already a star before she met him. Sounds like the comments are coming from an ex-boyfriend who got dumped.
He is, Larissa, and a terrible tipper.
Several friends of mine have waited on him, and all say he is a flaming tightwad.
@Leandra: you are spot on. What a rambling rant that was! And about Michael Vartan: he is/was not quite as famous and highly paid as she is. Even back in the Alias days. So if anything, he became more famous by dating her, not the other way around. And I’m convinced that neither dated the other for the media attention, they seemed truly in love back then. And Vartan was not fired from Alias: he was on the show until the very end and only missed a few episodes in the last season. They were both very professional about breaking up but still continuing to work together.
As for Ned’s comments about Jen getting pregnant to keep a man around, well that’s just one of the most heinous accusations anyone could make, against any woman, not just Jen Garner. You would never dare say that to her face in real life.
*lol* Now I must sound like I’m Jen’s sister or something! 😀
I don’t see what’s weird about it. They know each other well, having worked together closely for years. It’s not surprising to me that they would develop a non-work friendship as a result. It doesn’t always happen, but it did here. Where’s the weirdness?
@Leandra: Ned was talking about Jen dumping her first hubby (Scott Foley who played Noel on Felicity) for her Alias co-star (Michael Vartan) NOT Ben. She dumped Michael for Ben after she met Ben filming “Dare Devil” And it’s true that she got Michael fired from “Alias” after that so she wouldn’t have to deal with him anymore while she was dating Ben. She is cold and calculating and I’m behind Ned 100% on this.
Ned and Kamikaze Kitty (who are probably one and the same person),
you both need therapy,seriously f-ing move on, everyone else has.
Those comments about her getting pregnant after a couple of dates is so inappropriate, plus completely inaccurate. I agree with Anna’s comments about Jennifer’s relationship with Victor. Also, in terms of images, she has always seemed very wholesome to me. And she and Ben seem to have adorable kids. Violet seems pretty well adjusted to me and kids with screwed up parents or those in unhappy marriages typically have easily observable problems.
Actually, Ned is really Michael Vartan!! Sorry guy it just didn’t work out. Your firing wasnt done by Jen, it was because of the writers and producers and because of your poor acting and sad sack visage. Michael you were just a rebound from her first marriage and she only liked you as a friend NOT as a lover.
I don’t like JG either. Look at BA, he looks ***soooo*** sad now poor guy. I used to like her but I’ve started thinking she has some big issues.
Larissa is right, Victor Garber is gay. He’s her gay bestie. And they worked on Alias together for quite awhile, so I don’t see why their relationship is odd at all.
Hopefully she’ll go by Rose or Elizabeth
So, you ran out of excuses after 3 men and 2 pregnancies as means to get what Jen wants (and one guy getting fired).
So now, all you got left is to accuse me of being an actor she exploited in her attempts to get ahead?
Oh, and claiming I am the same person, when I wasn’t even online for a couple of hours, is hilarious.
I am allowing Celebitchy to confirm that I am not even in the West Coast, and I am definitely not Michael Vartan nor did I write another comment beside my first one.
I do understand your difficulties, though, in defending a women who again and again chose to use men and then ditch them once she maximized their ability to help her to climb up, and get pregnant without her partner’s consent, in a calculating manner.
I would never date Jen to begin with, since I find her utterly unattractive, even after she got the nose jobs and all the rest of the plastic work.
I feel bad for these men who got stung by a woman who looks more like a farmer working with her “men hands” in the field, rather than a movie star.
Actually, Ned’s not far off. Jen Garner is extremely ambitious and was willing to do whatever it took to become a big star.
She first met Ben Affleck when she had a small part in “Pearl Harbor” and then got to know him better when she co-starred in “Daredevil” with him. She was married to Scott Foley at the time (and during Daredevil, Ben was still with JLo). There were rumors about them, and JLo was supposedly very suspicious of Jen Garner, but it’s never been confirmed that anything actually happened.
This did cause strain in Jennifer Garner’s marriage, however, and she leaned heavily on Michael Vartan. He refused to get involved with her while she was still married, but there was plenty of flirtation, so Jennifer knew she had someone to go to (and remember, at this time, Jennifer Garner hadn’t “blown up” yet, while Michael had done a couple of large studio films (eg., Never Been Kissed). Once Jennifer formally separated from Scott Foley (who was suspicious of her and Affleck, not jealous over her long hours on Alias), then she took up with Michael Vartan.
Then she met up with Affleck again when he filmed a cameo (it was cut) for her film Elektra and cheated on Vartan. By then, Affleck was no longer with JLo. Once Jen thought she had a good chance at Affleck, she dumped Vartan. (Big mouth Kevin Smith talked about how Affleck called him to tell him he had “f*cked Elektra in the mouth”).
Although Affleck liked Jen, he wasn’t looking to get into anything too serious (he was still reeling from JLo), so she finally had an “accident” and ended up pregnant. (Kevin Smith even talked about how cavalier Affleck was toward Jen until she go pregnant when filming his third “Evening with Kevin Smith” in New Jersey.)
Yet Affleck is ultimately an insecure guy and didn’t want Jen’s ex-boyfriend playing the father of her baby, so he and Jen and one of the Alias producers (Ken Olin) got together and hatched the plot to kill of the character of Vaughn from ABC. They thought people only cared about Jen Garner.
The uproar that followed was a huge slap in the face to Jen Garner, and to say that she was ticked that they had to bring Vartan back is an understatement. She wasn’t a big enough star to keep the show’s ratings up. They even had to pay Vartan more money than Jen herself was earning per episode to get him to come back.
And let’s face it, Jen Garner is more hype than anything. There’s a reason Forbes ranked her #2 on the list of overpaid actors, despite her low price compared to true A-listers. The only thing keeping her in the press now is having Ben Affleck’s babies.
While I don’t know anything about all that other stuff Elle wrote about, her last sentence is undeniably true. Where would Jen Garner be if it wasn’t for Ben Affleck and more so cute, little Violet? Somewhere in the valley of forgotten TV actresses. And she knows this, so isn’t putting much effort in hiding her child from the shutterbugs. This is why some people (including me) are turned off by her. But as long as she is soccer mom’s union favourite, all is well in Jen-land.
wow elle…you’ve certainly been putting a lot of thought into this
It’s not a lot of thought when you know what happened. 😉
Telling the truth isn’t hard. Trying to support lies is what takes a lot of thought.
Me2, I’m sorry your friends thought Vic was such an awful tipper. We have lunch together a lot and every time he’s picked up the check, he’s left 25%. Just sayin’, man.
And Ned isn’t Vartan. Michael isn’t nearly that scathing and bitchy.
I’m a huge Alias fan so I followed JG’s life pretty closely while the show was on. It’s really not that weird that she’s close with Victor Garber. She had long hours on the Alias set and he played her father on the show for 5 years. If you’ve seen the show’s blooper reels, Jen and Victor are constantly fooling around. Not a big surprise they’re still close. As for JG “trapping” men to date her… please.
Daneel– maybe he only tips badly it when he’s not trying to impress his lunchmate.
That said, I love him as an actor, as long as he gives me my money’s worth, I don’t really care one way or the other.
Elle, just one nuance should be clarified, if I may-
as for “Yet Affleck is ultimately an insecure guy and didn’t want Jen’s ex-boyfriend playing the father of her baby…”.
Everyone who knows Ben or his family would know he would be extremely averse to leave his children or his “baby mama”.
Even though, Garner presented him with an extreme situation in which not only did he not choose to be a father to her child, but also, he barely knew her, didn’t even had a serious relationship with her and never intended to commit to her.
Garner knew of his life story that made him more sensitive and more averse to divorce and to “not to be with the mother of his child”, and yet she exploited exactly that personal matter.
You cannot blame Ben. He was in an awful situation and given his background, what she did to him was extremely cruel and impossible.
Ben might be many things, but with regard to the impossible situation that Jen created, he was more than a saint.
Trust me, any other guy would have left her in such situation and rightly so.
It was only because of the personal circumstances that Ben faced as a child, that Jen knew and understood- that made what she did to him even worse.
Actually, Ned, Jen and Ben had been dating for about 6 or 7 months when she got pregnant, so he certainly knew her at the time.
And Ben married her because the personal hit that his reputation would have taken if he didn’t would have killed his reputation (remember, they were building Jen as America’s Sweetheart at the time, PR-wise).
I’m sure the issues with his father played into it as well, but trust me when I say it wasn’t the sole consideration.
I absolutely believe Jen got pregnant on purpose, but getting pregnant is not a solo activity. Ben was stupid to trust her to be handling birth control.
So I wouldn’t call Ben a saint anymore than I’d call Jen one. Personally, I think they deserve each other.
We have to disagree on that one.
He was only dating, had no serious intentions (I am not even talking about “Marriage” or “Engagement”.
Claiming he “knew” her is really an overstatement.
How on earth should he thought she was going to do such a deceitful and consequential thing with such garvity and my God- it’s for life.
Please.
And regardless to the PR aspects that I agree that they tried to paint her as you explain, it was still an impossible situation for him, given what he has been through.
Just because you deal with something in the PR and marketing department, doesn’t mean it’s not a devastating thing you go through.
Even if for other people it seems more light or less the atrocity that was done to you.
You didn’t expect him to explain all of that to all the world, did you?
What was he supposed to do, tell them, that she did a disgusting thing and knew he could not live with himself had he done the normal thing and told her to go to hell?
When someone steals your money you can sue and go to the police.
What Jen did was robbing him for life, and forcing him to be in a relationship with her for her and responsible for a daughter he never wanted with a woman he didn’t love.
Add his father’s issues to the situation, and you would see what a tragedy it really was for him.
Oh, and he can’t even complain about it, be honest about the state of this marriage and has to fake happiness or normalcy.
He is a saint, when compared to Garner and how he handled what she has done to him.
Ben better hurry and get her knocked up again, she’s looking thin enough to start accepting movie roles. He can’t have that.
Ned, I’m in complete agreement that Ben didn’t have serious intentions with Jen Garner. He was still reeling from the JLo stuff, but he was dating Jen Garner for 6-7 months, so this was no one-night stand.
Where we disagree, I think, is in what responsibility a man has. If a man has no serious intentions to be with a woman, perhaps he shouldn’t be sleeping with her.
Since that’s not really realistic in this day and age, Ben should have taken care to “wrap himself up,” so to speak, to avoid making a baby in the first place. He obviously didn’t do that and left himself in a vulnerable position that Jen Garner took advantage of.
That doesn’t free him of all responsibility, so he’s not this completely innocent victim.
And he has a history of getting rid of girlfriend’s exes. When he and JLo got engaged, he got her to fire her first husband as manager of her restaurant, Madre. That’s what led him to write that tell-all book that he and JLo were in court about a couple of years ago.
He was definitely involved in Vartan’s firing.
It’s hard to believe that people accidentally get pregnant, with all the methods of prevention available these days.
I think Jennifer liked Ben all along, even while still married to Scott Foley. I saw an interview with her when she talked about getting together with Ben and she said she hadn’t really thought about him as a romantic possibility before (yeah right), just thought he was a nice guy, and then they met while filming (the extra scenes, I guess) and something developed. I could tell she was lying. She liked him the moment she met him.
But, alas, it’s there business. As for their new baby, I absolutely love the name they chose. It’s beautiful, unique and feminine.
I think Elle is right, and so are the other posters about Jen being a bit underhanded. I absolutely believe she had designs on Ben. I found this link to support that:
http://www.starswelove.com/scriptsphp/news.php?newsid=3981
It’s also on sfgate.com too and other articles.
Affleck Accused of Affair with Garner
15 April 2003 | From wenn.com | See recent WENN news
Hollywood star Ben Affleck has been blamed for Jennifer Garner’s sudden split from her husband Scott Foley. Sources tell American tabloid the Globe that Garner and Affleck – who’s engaged to Jennifer Lopez – were very cozy on the Los Angeles set of their blockbuster movie Daredevil. A set source says, “Everyone was stunned to see how they acted around each other – especially since she was married and Ben was with J.Lo.” At the time, Lopez was 3,000 miles away on America’s East Coast filming Maid In Manhattan, while Affleck and sexy Garner seemed to be growing closer, eyewitnesses tell the publication. The source notes, “If Ben was there, she’d show up on the set even when she wasn’t due to work. That’s very unusual for actors if they’re not shooting, they don’t like to go to the set. Jennifer would stay close to Ben, watching him film his scenes. She’d hang around for hours. Then they’d walk off together between shooting toward his trailer.” And although Garner – who has also been linked to her Alias costar Michael Vartan – dismisses the claims as “pure fantasy”, a pal of the beauty tells the Globe, “I’m convinced that Jennifer and Ben had an affair on the set of Daredevil – and Scott believes too.”
I don’t know about this jen,ben and vartan relationship thing but you should not judge victor garber for any of what they did wheather its true or not.May be is gay,may be his not.But his talent has an actor is unquestionable.He is a great actor.So, stop insulting him.
@Me2 – Maybe Victor only tips badly when he gets bad service. Tell your friends to give him better service next time.
Vartan is, and has always been, overrated as an actor.
If Vartan is such a great actor, why didn’t Alias rank higher in the rating during the 4 years he was on the show and especially during season 3 and 4 when they tried to make him an important character.
It didn’t work cause the actor is boring.
Vartan has been in a couple of movies since leaving Alias. I don’t think any of made it out of the theater.
Hey there! Really helpful post! I’m very thrilled that I was able to stumble upon your blog while searching Google. Thank you for this excellent post!