It’s hard to imagine a time when Jennifer Garner was anything other than a beloved A-list actor with an estimated net worth of around $80 million, but everybody starts somewhere — and the 53-year-old star recently reflected on her time working as a hostess in a restaurant in New York City.
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For reference, Jen was born in Texas but moved to West Virginia at the age of three, where she spent her childhood. In 1993, at age 21, she studied at the National Theater Institute in Connecticut before relocating to New York in 1995 to pursue an acting career.
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While Jennifer began making on-screen appearances that same year, including her debut in the romance miniseries Zaya, she also worked multiple other jobs to make ends meet, including babysitting, theater understudying, and hostessing.
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And during her appearance on this week’s episode of Dish from Waitrose, Jennifer opened up about this period in her life — and even name-dropped one of the celebrities that she encountered during her time as a hostess.
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“When I lived in New York, and I worked at a restaurant, part of my job for Sunday brunch was I’d get to ride a cab, they paid for my cab, and I would stop at H&H Bagels and pick up like several dozen bagels for the brunch,” Jennifer began. “And while I was waiting, while they bagged them up, they would give me whatever was out of the oven. And I still remember just standing there, I’d have one after the other.”
And the star left host Nick Grimshaw stunned when she went on to reveal: “I had to merchandise the restaurant. I had to put the beautiful people in one area.”
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“What?!” Nick exclaimed. “So they put the hot people by the front?!” To which Jennifer calmly affirmed: “Yes! You put the beautiful people on certain tables, you put celebrities on certain tables, and if somebody even mildly famous walked in… Well, somebody actually very famous used to come in all the time.”
“Steve Martin would come in, and he had a table that he liked, it was table five,” she then revealed. “And I would have to go to those people and say: ‘I am moving you to the bar and I’m gonna buy you some calamari, and that’s going to be on me.’ And I was, like, 22, and I’m going up to people who are like: ‘Wait, I’m in the middle of a date, you’re moving me?!’ Yes, I am.”
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Nick’s co-host, Angela Hartnett, who is a Michelin-star chef, then confirmed that what Jennifer had said is common practice across the restaurant industry, and that some big restaurants call the outer areas “Siberia.” She explained: “They have the real inner area that they sit everyone that wants to be seen, and then if you’re sat outside that you’re basically sat in Siberia.”
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“For us, it was if you were a circle,” Jen shared. “So, as we were writing people’s names down, if we put a circle next to them, they got seated in Siberia.”
Seating politics aside, Jen did go on to share how working in a restaurant was “so helpful” to her in life, explaining: “You’re part of a team. Anytime you are part of a team… If you are lucky enough to be in the position as an actor that you’re being interviewed, then you are kind of the tip of a spear, right? But if you see yourself that way instead of just in the muck of the team, I think you’re kind it’s you’ve screwed up somewhere along the way.”
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“I’ve had more nightmares about my days as a hostess, more work nightmares, than I have had actors’ nightmares,” she then concluded. “And I’ve had a lot of actors’ nightmares!”
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While Jennifer regularly secured acting work after moving to New York in 1995, her big break arguably came in 2001, when she was cast as Sydney Bristow in the ABC spy series Alias.
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She is now best known for movies like 13 Going On 30 and Juno, and is currently starring in the Apple TV series The Last Thing He Told Me.
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You can watch Jen’s episode of Dish from Waitrose in full below. As always, let me know your thoughts in the comments!More on this
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