LOS ANGELES -- Single life is a nice place to visit, but Jennifer Garner wouldn't want to stay there.

"The whole point of playing a role is that it's not really you. It was fun to go back -- to do a romantic comedy like this and fall in love, it's great," says Garner of Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, which opens Friday and pairs her with Matthew McConaughey.

Off-screen she has two daughters -- three-year-old Violet Anne and four-month-old Seraphina Rose Elizabeth -- with husband Ben Affleck.

Matchmaking, of course, is always a gamble, especially if your film is dependent on the chemistry of your actors. So how did director Mark Waters know McConaughey and Garner would click? He didn't.

"You don't know. It's all just fabricating things in your head and hoping it works," he says. "The thing I liked about the two of them was that they were both athletes, and I thought that boded well for the two of them as romantic partners and acting partners. Because they have this kind of competitive streak that they both want to outdo each other. And I generally like actors who have an athletic background, or used to be on teams, because they don't have a diva attitude. They're like, 'Give me the ball, coach, tell me what to do.' "

Or as Garner puts it, "We have a good time with it, but we show up to work."

Says McConaughey: "She doesn't bring any riff-raff, frizzle-frazzle, extra-BS drama from the outside."

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