A mock magazine called Poise features a gorgeous girl-next-door photo of Jennifer Garner and teases its readers with the title: "Thirty, Flirty & Thriving."

Garner just turned 32 yesterday. She really is flirty, in that girl-pal sense as a young woman who instantly disarms and charms even cynics. She is thriving, spectacularly: Her first flat-out comedy movie, 13 Going On 30, could propel her to leading-lady status in Hollywood and, next month, she goes into production on Elektra, the spinoff from Daredevil in which she will reprise her role as the leather-clad, comic book superheroine named Elektra Natchios.

So which one is closer to the real Garner? The flirty femme Jenna in 13 Going On 30 or the lethal martial artist who kicks butt as Sydney Bristow in Alias and as Elektra?

"I would say Jenna's much closer to my own personality than anything I've been known for," Garner says. "I mean ... we're all multi-faceted, so Sydney is definitely a side of me. But, in this, I feel a little more exposed."

Mark Ruffalo, her 13 Going On 30 co-star and on-screen love interest, admits he did expect to meet the Garner he saw in the sexualized action roles she plays in Alias.

"That's what I thought she was going to be," Ruffalo says in Hollywood, on a brilliant California day that is as sunny as Garner's disposition. "(At the initial read-through for the script), this girl came in with no makeup and a ponytail and sweats, like she just rolled out of bed -- but very fresh looking. And I went, 'Who is that girl? Really cute!'

"I didn't know it was Jennifer Garner because I was expecting someone in a leather bustier and high heels. I was expecting Alias. And I thought she was going to come and kick my ass!"

Ruffalo chuckles. He is an imp with a dry sense of humour. Then he fesses up to what Garner is really like, to him, despite the turmoil in her personal life over the past 18 months (Garner split up with her husband, actor Scott Foley, whom she met on the set of Felicity, and later dated her Alias co-star, Michael Vartan).

"As sweet as she is in her public persona, that's who she is," Ruffalo says. "She really is one of the genuinely decent leading ladies. She is fun. She is not mean to people. She is not a control freak. You know, she is not a karate-chop kid. She's really kind of goofy like she is in the movie."

In 13 Going On 30, Garner plays a New York magazine editor who suddenly wakes up thinking she is still 13 years old. The memory of the 17 intervening years has been wiped clean for her, but not for anyone else. So, when she acts like the 13-year-old girl she thinks she is, everyone else thinks she has gone nutty. Think Tom Hanks in Big.

"There were a couple of weeks, before we started, where it came up so often that I remember being really daunted," Garner says of the Big connection. "I revere Tom Hanks in every way, in every role he's played and in the way he lives his personal life. So, to be casually compared to him feels to me presumptive. And I so didn't want that.

"Then I realized that that is just the easiest way to describe the movie. It's not saying, 'Look, this role is Tom Hanks.' I knew that I was going to do my own things with it -- for better, for worse -- and that I could only hope to have a couple of moments there that were as honest as what he accomplished when he did Big."

Andy Serkis, the Briton who helped Peter Jackson develop the character of Gollum into a triumph of acting and technology in The Lord Of The Rings, thinks Garner has accomplished more than she realizes. In a sparky comedic role, Serkis smartly plays her magazine boss in 13 Going On 30.

"It's a big step and she's proven how versatile she is as an actress," Serkis says, "because I think what she has done in this is incredible. It's very truthful. It's emotionally very engaging. Those love scenes are handled really sweetly. And she's funny. It's a really big acting challenge to carry off, (being) a 13-year-old in a 30-year-old's body and to make that believable."

Ms. Modesty, of course, says it was not as hard as it looks, because she does feel more like a kid inside than an adult.

"It was more about letting go of the inhibitions. Part of the reason I took this movie was that the cast and crew of Alias said, 'Jennifer, when the camera's rolling, you're 30, and when they say cut, you're 134. So you might as well flip it and get paid for it!' "

To refresh her 13-year-old's mentality, Garner hung out with groups of teenaged girls, especially at a slumber party with the daughters of the movie's triumvirate of female producers.

"I hung out with 13-year-olds and I was reminded of where they are mentally," Garner says. "I was so pleased and relieved. While I'm aware that they see everything that is going on, they were incredibly innocent at heart."

That is exactly the spirit she tries to convey in 13 Going On 30. "We are more of a child inside than we are willing to admit to ourselves."


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