Jennifer Garner on Rejection: The rejections where you get close enough to imagine yourself in the position itself; where you mentally arrange your life around it and think that this could finally be it, hurt a little too much
Jennifer Garner knows that rejection. In one of those very Hollywood twists that would sound stereotypical in a screenplay, the role she once desperately wanted and did not get was followed by the role that changes her life.
Jennifer Garner on Rejection
Jennifer Garner recently opened up about the experience of rejection in an interview. She was talking about the rather brutal reality of being an actor, where rejection is not an occasional inconvenience but part of the job description.
Garner explained, describing the emotional rollercoaster of finally landing a project after countless auditions, only for that project to potentially fail anyway. She spoke about developing a good “bounce”, which is the ability to shake things off and keep moving.
The one rejection she still remembers is The West Wing, and she mentions that it hurt her.
Jennifer Garner Really Wanted The West Wing
Before Jennifer Garner had Alias that turned her into a star, Garner was still navigating the wonderfully cruel machinery of Hollywood. She had auditioned for a role in The West Wing and had made it through to the testing stage, meaning this was not some distant situation but was rather close.
Garner recalls wanting it badly, and there is something almost painfully relatable about that because when you lose something you never really cared about, you move on. However, when you lose something you really wanted, you mourn it.
She Went To The Desert
Jennifer Garner did not pretend that the rejection did not bother her. She reportedly went to the desert; she went to Palm Springs by herself for a couple of days and simply sat with what had happened.
That detail is really important because so many celebrity career stories are polished after the fact. The successful person tells you about the rejection, but the rejection is always romanticised as the stepping stone and a necessary building block before the breakthrough.
The version that Garner gave us is the less tidy one; she wanted a role, did not get it, which hurt her, so she went somewhere quiet, which is a very believable version of resilience.
God’s Protection
Garner’s phrase, “Rejection is God’s protection”, does a lot of work here. She did not present it as some grand universal law but speaks of it in an almost playful manner.
She said that she wondered what it is, and whatever it is, she was all in for it. Perhaps that is why the sentiment works better coming from her because she is not claiming that the rejection did not hurt but is simply saying that sometimes you simply cannot know what a “no” is making space for.
We Are All Bad at Waiting for the Plot Twist
This is where Garner’s story becomes bigger than an industry because most of us have had our own version of The West Wing.
The job we did not get, the college we did not get into, the person who did not choose us, the pitch that got rejected, the friendship that ended or the opportunity that seemed aligned perfectly with the life we had pictured- losing it seemed like losing the future itself.
The annoying thing about disappointment is that it does not come with a narrator; nobody stands beside you to tell you that rejection is God’s plan. You just know you did not get what you wanted. Jennifer Garner makes this career lesson look simple.
Garner did not know that her career-establishing role was on the way; she just knew that she could not get what she badly wanted. Perhaps every lesson is not that every rejection is a secret blessing: sometimes rejections are painful; sometimes things do not work out and remain painful, but you cannot always see the next thing from where you stand already, which is a frustratingly beautiful thing.
Rejection Is Not A Verdict Perhaps
A rejection does not necessarily tell you what you are worth: it tells you what happened in that particular room with those people at that time.
Garner was not “bad because she did not get the role; she eventually got Alias, and in hindsight it is tempting to say that the universe just got stars aligned, but perhaps the universe did not even know.
Perhaps Garner just kept going long enough for another opportunity to find her, which is a less glamorous and more useful lesson. You do not always need to understand rejection, and you do not immediately turn it into gratitude.
You need not convince yourself that you never wanted the thing: sometimes you can just admit that you wanted it badly and you did not get it; and that you are upset, eventually moving on to what next.
Jennifer Garner’s next thing to happen was Alias, and for the rest of us, the next thing might be smaller, quieter and less cinematic. You never really know, which is a strange thing about rejection.
Sometimes the doors close; sometimes you spend two days in the desert and sometimes some weeks later another door opens, one that you might not even be looking at. Perhaps that is the real reason Garner’s story sticks; not because every “no” is secretly a “yes” in disguise but because occasionally the thing you thought was the end of your story is simply where the story changes direction.
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