Jennifer Garner opened up about the financial insecurity she faced following her divorce from Ben Affleck in 2015. The actress admitted that she stepped away from the industry at the time to focus on raising her three children,
"I panicked when I was first out of my marriage and realised I had taken such a step back in my work," Jennifer shared on Emma Grede's Aspire podcast. "Suddenly I realised, like, I don't know how long I'll be able to work. This isn't a career that's like, hey, you're 60, you're 55, you're 43 - come on, let's pay you more than you've ever made. That's not been traditionally the role."
The former couple, who were married from 2005 to 2015, share three children – Violet, Finn, and Samuel. Jennifer and Ben's divorce was finalized in 2018. "I was suddenly like, wait a minute, I have to take care of myself. I have to take care of these kids. So what is it going to be?" she added.
© Getty ImagesJennifer explained that she and her manager became "very calculated" about what her next roles would look like, with a factor being that she wanted to remain close to home. "She was like, how can you work? And I said, I can work in Los Angeles. I can't leave these kids for six months at a time. I would love to – I love going on location – but that is not this time in my career," she shared.
"And so it's like, okay, what can we make happen? How can we do it? And we just got really targeted and still about it."
© Getty ImagesJennifer decided to co-found Once Upon a Farm, the organic children's food business, in 2017. "Once Upon a Farm was very much a part of that play. It's just the crazy thing is it's working," she said. The company earned a value of approximately $724 million. According to Forbes, Jennifer's stake in the company is worth $50 million.
© WireImageThe star continued: "It's not like you can just unfamous yourself. Life is expensive and you still have to kind of figure out how you're going to live. And just because you're well known by people does not mean that there is some great living being provided for you. And it became very serious to me really quickly as someone who had never given a lot of thought to money. Like, oh, I need to be an earner here."
© Todd Williamson/NBCUniversal"All he has to do is look at me funny and I convince myself that I am broke. My problem is... I give a lot of money away," Jennifer said of her manager. "So every now and then he's like, can you pump the brakes? So that is something that I had to cool my jets on."
