(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Fri 21 November 2025 6:30, UK
While most people would see Jennifer Garner and think of her iconic turn in the 2000s legend 13 Going on 30 or a similar style of rom-com, the actor has actually had plenty of unique roles throughout the years.
She’s played everything from an assassin turned superhero in the box office bomb Elektra to a first-line doctor during the AIDs crisis in Dallas Buyers Club and the hopeful, overbearing prospective adoption mother in Juno. But there’s one project that people frequently forget, and it’s the role Garner claims as the best she ever got to play.
Alias was a spy thriller that ran from 2001 to 2006, starring Garner as badass secret agent Sydney Bristow, who got, you guessed it, different aliases every week. Much in the same vein as the wave of 1990s and 2000s television that focused on strong female characters, it shot Garner to fame and established her as a leading woman.
However, it doesn’t seem to have garnered (pun not intended) the same cult following as similar TV shows of the time, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Zena: Warrior Princess. But Garner doesn’t seem to care about how the rest of the world feels, for her, it was a once-in-a-lifetime role.
After all, she got a new identity and costume, including custom wigs, every week, she learned how to do many of her own stunts and dabbled with a few different languages. Not every actor can say the same. “They would just take me to the top of a building Downtown and say, ‘Okay, just climb out of this window. You’re just gonna go down this wire,” she reflected during an interview with Vanity Fair.
She also got to learn how to fight, which she loved because it “felt like dance”. And not only that, she would then be expected to combine a foreign language with choreography and stunts, all while in some sort of elaborate costume. It might sound like a complete nightmare of a job to most people, but for Garner, who is usually seen as the ‘girl-next-door’, it’s still the best thing she’s done.
Her work on Alias sounds like the kind of thing you think you’ll get to do as an actor when you’re a kid. In before, growing up and realising that most things these days are greenscreen or CGI, or your stunt double does most of the work.
So, it’s no surprise really that she’s continually expressed a desire to return to the iconic role. She’s been so open to it, in fact, that there were rumours spread like wildfire a few years ago, when she and Abrams were due to collaborate on a show together. Fans of the show jumped to conclusions and presumed Sydney Bristow was returning to their screens.
Alas, it was a different limited Apple TV series that Garner ended up pulling out of due to scheduling conflicts. But given her recent return as Elektra in Deadpool & Wolverine and her open mind on the matter, there remains hope for Alias fans.
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