Jennifer Garner takes her stunts very seriously. The actress has been a part of some notorious action movies and shows throughout her career, and has recently opened up about her competitive nature, resulting in an injury that calls to mind one of Mike Tyson's most infamous moments.
While doing press for her new project, "The Last Thing He Told Me," Garner opened up about working with Sala Baker, a stunt performer she'd worked with in the movie "The Kingdom."
“Pete Berg, who was the director, told him to try to kill me. We did not have a lot of choreography, and he told me to do anything I could to survive," she said. "He did, and I did, and I ended up scrambling onto his back. I bit his ear, and we have a picture of him missing a chunk of ear, because we were not kidding.”
When they reunited for "The Last Thing He Told Me," Garner made it clear that she didn't want Baker to hold back. "I was like, ‘No, no, no, no, he’s not going to be careful. I’m not going to be careful. Just back out of the way. I have a score to settle here.’ And Sal was with us the entire season."
"So prepare yourselves," teased Garner to the audience.
Garner's co-star, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, asked more details about the incident, with Garner clarifying that she bit Baker's ear "like Mike Tyson."
Garner's career as an action star
Garner has starred in numerous projects that have action scenes in them, including her first series, "Alias," and "Elektra." Most recently, she starred in "Peppermint," an action film that demanded plenty of training for the part.
“I’ve been training for a while on this. I did MMA skills, gun skills, and knife skills. It was the connection to the physical that made me kind of understand her fight for her daughter,” she said in a 2018 interview with PEOPLE.
The film's director, Pierre Morel, shared how impressed he was with Garner's work. “She was very physical, she was very fit — even before we started training,” he said. “She was dead-on, ready to go for it. The fact that everything is done by the actor is key.”