Cineplex Magazine March 2012

utter
Hits tHeatres
later tHis year
We’ve all seen the paparazzi
pics of Jennifer Garner the radiant, down-to-earth wife
and mother. There she is with husband Ben Affleck and
their two kids (as of press time the pregnant Garner had
not yet given birth to the couple’s third child) on a family
outing to the beach or the market.
But there’s more to Garner than the stroller mama
pics would have you believe. The 39-year-old actor who
became a household name playing a secret agent on
TV’s Alias, and has starred in films such as Juno,
13 Going on 30 and The Kingdom, is now a producer. Her
debut effort is the satirical comedy Butter, which comes
out later this year.
Set in Iowa, Butter casts Garner as Laura Pickler, the
ambitious wife of butter-carving champion Bob Pickler
(Ty Burrell). When Bob retires, Laura throws herself into
winning the state crown, but she meets her match in
Destiny (Yara Shahidi), a talented 10-year-old
African-American girl with a gift for turning butter
into pure art.
During the Toronto International Film Festival, we
spoke with the expectant mother about Butter, becoming
a producer and the power of trusting her own voice.
Tell me about creating
Laura Pickler, this hilarious,
high-strung woman who basks
in the glory of her husband’s
butter-carving career.
“I did the strangest research for
this movie. YouTube is a wonderful
thing for actors.”
What did you watch on YouTube?
“I watched archive footage of all kinds of first ladies — first ladies of
Iowa, first ladies of Texas, presidential first ladies — people Laura
would aspire to be. And I watched a lot of beauty queens. Then weird
things like Muhammad Ali, when he was at his ‘float like a butterfly,
sting like a bee’ stage. It was a blast.”
ConTInUEd
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