Jennifer Garner Hits Hard with "The Kingdom"

Los Angeles - She's not on television as Sidney Bristow in "Alias" any more and she's given birth to a baby girl, but that doesn't mean that actress Jennifer Garner has forgotten how to kick butt. Garner proved that once again at Monday night's premiere of "The Kingdom," the new action film that premiered at the Mann Village Theater in Westwood. Garner plays one of a group of elite FBI agents (Jamie Foxx, Jason Bateman, Chris Cooper, who all walked the red carpet along with her) sent into Saudi Arabia to find a terrorist bomber.

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The ensuing flick, directed by Peter Berg, is jam-packed with action, and Garner is in the heart of many of the sequences, fights that unexpectedly taxed the veteran action heroine.

"I thought it wasn't going to be much of anything. I kept saying to my stunt double, Shauna Duggins, who I've worked with for six years. I said ?When are we going to have rehearsals for this fight scene?' We go in 110 percent prepared. I mean I could still do the fights from ?Daredevil' in my sleep, and a bunch of the ?Alias' ones," Garner told reporters earlier at a press conference in Beverly Hills.

"She said 'They keep saying to me that we don't need to rehearse.' That day I showed up, her eyes were this big, her hair was out to here, and she had just learned the fight. She said ?this is unlike anything we have ever, ever done.' It turned out to be an amazingly real scrabble."

Plus, Ben Affleck, Garner's famous husband, happened to be on the set the day that fight was shooting.

"He was visiting the set the day that we shot that fight scene. I thought it would have made him a little bit nervous to see them chucking me against the wall, harder and harder with every take," she laughed. "He was a little too calm about it, between us, I felt like he could have been a little bit more ?My wife, you better be careful with her.' That wasn't it, he was just like ?Go, go for it babe. Harder!'"

Garner, whose daughter Violet turns two in December, admitted that getting back into the hardcore action genre did take some getting used to; so much so that the 36-year-old ended up in the hospital during the shoot, much of which took place in the desert heat.

"I spent two nights in the hospital," she recalled. "That was entertaining. Out of all the stuff I have ever done, I had never gone down before. I had never had to go to the hospital, I had never, and I had worked so many more hours than this. I had never fainted or anything like that. Never at all. I just was dizzy and I didn't feel right. When we were on our way home I said ?I feel not right enough that I don't know if I can pick up my child. Lets just go get me checked out.'

"It turned out that basically, after all was said and done, it was too hot and I was in the heat for too long every day, to still be breastfeeding, for my body. I flipped myself into heat stroke. They gave me fluids, and then I felt better."

Garner certainly looked healthy - radiant, in fact - at the premiere, as she greeted her co-stars in "The Kingdom" (Foxx, Bateman, Cooper, as well as Jeremy Piven, Frances Fisher, Kyle Chandler, Minka Kelly) as well as friends Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, Serena Williams, Justine Batemen, Amanda Peet, Natasha Wagner, and Garcelle Beauvais.

In fact, she feels so good these days that she's about to fulfill one of her lifelong dreams, to star on Broadway. She'll join Kevin Kline there in "Cyrano de Bergerac" this fall, for a limited run beginning November 1.

"It's always been my absolute dream of all dreams. All of this stuff that I have done, has been accidental. I always, always meant to be on stage. I only ended up even auditioning for television and movies because I was understudying a Turgenev play on Broadway and was so broke that when I got a miniseries I had to take it," she chuckled.

"So this chance I couldn't pass up. Working with Kevin Kline, being in New York in the fall, doing this role, getting to say these words. I mean, just thinking about it I get so excited!"