Happy birthday, Jennifer Garner! The actress turned 47 today, April 17, and we needed to celebrate with her. Recently, she’s been spotted being the ultimate co-parent alongside Ben Affleck, so we decided that the best way to honor her today was to take a look at some of the sweetest moments she’s had with her adorable family. (Because yes, even though she and Ben, 46, are no longer married, they’ve been heavily committed to remaining a family unit for their three children.)
In a recent interview, Jennifer opened up about being a parent who is also a celebrity and the questions she asks herself in order to balance both. “How do you adapt to your career? That’s a big question. Being someone who is well known requires an enormous adaptation,” the Love, Simon star told the Wall Street Journal Magazine. “Who am I now? How do I go through the world? Then there’s having children and, in my case, a career that’s a very selfish one. The combination of those things is the largest adaption of all. When I had kids, I started considering how jobs worked for my family. How much am I going to ask of my partner and kids? What’s worth it and what isn’t?”
She added that adapting to parenthood in the spotlight is something she and her ex-husband navigated together. “Something Ben and I used to say to each other all the time is, ‘We have to adapt.’ We were surrounded by paparazzi,” she said. “There were so many things you wouldn’t expect. We’d be left alone at Disneyland and then we would be at a park in Santa Monica. But if you love something, you’ll do whatever you need to do.” The parents of Violet, 13, Seraphina ,10, and Samuel, 6, were together from 2004 to 2015 before finalizing their divorce last October.
We hope Jennifer has an amazing day and gets to spend it with her three adorable kids. Get clicking through the gallery above to see all the times she killed it as a mom alongside her co-parent Ben.