Jennifer Garner evidently isn’t great at surprising unsuspecting fans.
In an appearance on Monday’s episode of The Ellen DeGeneres Show, the actress reveals she tried — and failed — to surprise moviegoers at a screening of her film Peppermint, which hit theaters last month.
Garner said “someone at the studio” suggested that she make a surprise appearance on opening day at a theater where the movie was showing. After getting her three kids to bed, she pumped herself up to do it and headed to the theater — “in sweats.”
“As soon as I got there, I realized, ‘I don’t really have a plan for this. I don’t know what I’m gonna do, but I can’t actually face an audience,'” she told DeGeneres.
Garner continued: “So I walked up to the theater, and they started walking out. I realized it, and I hid in a corner like a grownup and I could hear these people talking about me as they went by.”
Fortunately for her, the comments she heard were positive.
“I wanted somebody to say, ‘She’s right here — be careful; she’s very, you know — “
“Fragile,” DeGeneres offered.
“Fragile,” Garner agreed. “But if they had looked around, I was there.”
In the action film, from Taken director Pierre Morel, Garner plays a mother turned violent vigilante after her husband and daughter are gunned down.
Watch the Ellen clip below, in which Garner also talks about her Halloween decorations and why she really wants her kids to dress up like carrots this year.
