Jennifer Garner is promoting Peppermint, her action revenge film directed by Taken’s Pierre Morel and written by Chad St. John (London Has Fallen, not a good recommendation for his skills). She did a brief video interview with People about training physically for the role and about her character’s motivation. I came away from this wanting to know more about her MMA training in particular. I sometimes do dance workouts on PopSugar fitness with her aerobics trainer, Simone De La Rue, and I would be interested in the other stuff she did to get so fit. (I think it’s specific to stunts for this this film though and I hate burpees and weight lifting so I don’t know why I care.) Garner leans heavily into the mom fighting for her family angle, which makes me think she took this role to help further her image. It will likely work, especially if it’s well received. Here’s some of what she said and you can see the video on People.

“I was excited right from the jump. The first time I read the script for Peppermint because it’s an original story and there’s a strong woman at the middle.

“My character, Riley, watches this happen in front of her. She sees the people who killed her family,” Garner says. “She discovers the police and the people who should be helping her are all on the wrong side of the law.

“I was excited right from the jump. The first time I read the script for Peppermint because it’s an original story and there’s a strong woman at the middle.

“My character, Riley, watches this happen in front of her. She sees the people who killed her family,” Garner says. “She discovers the police and the people who should be helping her are all on the wrong side of the law.

“I’ve been training for a while on this. I did MMA skills, gun skills, knife skills. It was the connection to the physical that made me kind of understand her fight for her daughter. The action is smart and the fights are smart and they’re all me. What would you fight for more than your family?”

[From People]

Notice how she said that her character was fighting for her daughter, even though her character’s husband was killed too. I’ve been thinking about the fact that Ben’s rehab stay ended up happening right before Jen’s movie premiere. I’m sure it was just a coincidence, but it made her seem stronger and more able to fight for her family, you know? You wonder sometimes if celebrities end up playing roles in their personal lives to fit the image they’re trying to portray and if they’re even aware of it. Even when I was barely dabbling in Facebook I noticed was making choices that would make for better photos and posts. Imagine how it would be if you had millions of Instagram followers, photographers following you around all day and the press covering your family outings.

Speaking of content for social media, Jen recently went to Cincinnati, Ohio to ask shoppers at an area Kroger (grocery store) if they wanted to try her organic baby food, Once Upon a Farm. She wasn’t wearing makeup and was unrecognizable (to non gossip fans, all of us would recognize her) to shoppers, who invariably turned her down. We know this because of her Instagram story about it. Whose idea was it to ask shoppers to try baby food? The market is moms, not average people shopping, and most people won’t have occasion to ever buy baby food after they’re past the parenting stage. Plus, even moms don’t usually want to try baby food because it tastes terrible. It makes for a cute video of Jennifer Garner getting turned down. Some Kroger employees tried it, as did a sweet baby. You can see her video on Instagram if you follow her today, and here are some screenshots.

Photos credit: WENN, screenshots from People video and Instagram/Jennifer Garner