Why Jennifer Garner is Grateful She Grew Up in a Small Town (Exclusive)

Jennifer Garner has been a longtime Los Angeles resident, ever since kicking off her acting career in the late ’90s. But before she was a big star doing shows like Alias and films like 13 Going on 30, she grew up living a much more low-key life in Charleston, West Virginia.

Looking back, she says she’s grateful she was raised in a smaller town, with a sense of community.

“I don’t think Charleston is especially a city, but it’s not a small town either,” Garner, 53, says of her hometown. “But it’s the country and it’s small and you are a part of your community, and you rely on your community in a way that’s harder to do in L.A.,” she says.

Garner is currently starring as one of the main characters in the scripted podcast series The Good Life, which is based on Modern Family actor Ty Burrell’s own childhood of moving to tiny rural town with his family to run the general store. The series follows the ups and downs as the family adjusts to a radically different world outside of the city, and Garner plays a mom who leaves her high-stress corporate job to help run the store.

“I think in a smaller town, there is room for people to be real characters and that certainly that was certainly true in West Virginia,” Garner continues. “It still is. The local sheriff was also in the community theater, which also starred the major heart surgeon. I had a very colorful life in my own way in that city.”

She says that sense of community has stayed with her.

“That’s something that I still take with me from growing up,” she says. “I look for that community, or I try to create it. When my kids were younger and came with me on location, we’d always get a library card, and get to know our neighbors or the local storekeeper.”

The mom-of-three is currently working on the Five-Star Weekend, an upcoming series based on the Elin Hilderbrand book about a food blogger living in Nantucket. Garner acknowledges she’s playing a mom again — and has no problem with it.

“It doesn’t bother me in the least,” she says of playing mothers. “Am I being typecast? If so, I’m doing it to myself because I’ve created a lot of projects where I’m the mom.” She says she relishes making family-friendly fare, like The Good Life, which she says is the perfect road-trip show for families. “It feels good,” she says of enjoying family shows. “Sometimes you need to let a little light in.”

She adds, “I definitely have found that it feeds me to do something that is going to be fun for our family to watch together and for kids to see,” she says. “And it makes them happy. I mean, I aspire to be Ty. Because my kids could be less than impressed by me or my projects, but when I told them I was working with Mr. Peabody from Mr. Peabody & Sherman, they acted like I was a superstar.”