Garnering new strength
‘Alias’ alum steps up her fighting game in new revenge flick
JENNIFER Garner has kicked ass her entire career. On the TV series “Alias,” she subdued European villains wearing skintight clothes and a hot pink wig; in “Elektra,” the actress became a sword-wielding superhero.
But for the new movie “Peppermint,” in which Garner plays a mom who gets bloody revenge for the death of her husband and daughter, the 46-year-old star needed to learn a new kind of combat.
“[Director] Pierre Morel, he said to me, ‘ Man, I don’t wanna see all this kung fu, karate stuff.. I wanna see stuff that’s streetwise,’ ” stunt coordinator Keith Woulard tells The Post. “And me being from Chicago, I know a lot of street stuff.”
Woulard had worked with Garner in 2007 on the action thriller “The Kingdom,” and whilehile that film didn’t include the roundnd kicks and karate chops of the actress’ pre-previous work, her character was still a trained FBI agent. “Peppermint” needed true grit.
“As soon as we got together again on this film ‘Peppermint,’ she was, like, ‘Teach me some new stuff,’ ” Woulard says. So, the stuntman and his team trained Garner three times a week, four hours a day for about a month. Occasionally she would call them on a whim to stop by her house for more practice.
The fights, Woulard says, were created improvisationally, with Garner’s help.
“We’d go through different moves, dif- ferent techniques. And we would play roles. We would run up on her and go, ‘What would you do?’ ” The team would then film the final product and present their creation to Morel, best known for directing “Taken.”
“And Pierre would go ‘ Oh, that’s bad . . . badass!’ ” Woulard says.
Another key player in the combat of “Peppermint” is Garner’s longtime stunt double Shauna Duggins. The two have regularly worked together since “Alias” premiered in 2001.
“There is a trust there, and a mutual re- spect,” says Duggins, who last doubled for Garner in “The Kingdom.” “When she called and said, ‘I’m gonna do another action movie,’ I was over the moon.”
Garner, Duggins adds, does more than 90 percent of her own stunts. The stunt double only steps in if the risk becomes too great, such as when the actress’ body needs to land on concrete.
“[Garner] was already in phenomenal shape, so it was just learning a different style,” Duggins says. “She boxed a lot. We did a lot of training with her with knees, with elbows . . . disarming guns and then using the guns — whether it’s her own or their gun — as a weapon.”
One of Woulard’s favorite fights takes place early in the film, behind the wheel. “We asked [Garner], ‘What would you do in a car?’ ” the coordinator says. “You’ve got a man with a knife, you’ve got a man throwing punches. You need to learn blocking, you need to learn countering. We went over and over and over it.”
The result is a brutal, in-your-face battle that leaves one person alive.
“When she gets out [of the car,] you feel her pain,” says Duggins.