After taking a break from films to relax with her daughter, Violet, Jennifer Garner?s back in the public eye with Catch and Release. Although a fan of action movies, Garner returns to the kinder, gentler genre of romantic comedies (although this one leans heavily toward the romantic drama label) with Catch and Release co-starring Timothy Olyphant, Kevin Smith, and Sam Jaeger.

Garner plays Gray, a young woman whose fiancé dies right before their wedding.

In fact, Grady?s death comes so close to the ceremony that the cake is chilling in the refrigerator and floral deliveries for the wedding are arriving at the same time as friends and family gather at the house to mourn his passing. The film follows Gray and her fiancé?s closest male friends as they attempt to deal with the impact of Grady?s death and the secrets revealed with his passing.

The Delayed Release of Catch and Release: Between her commitment to Alias and her commitment as a new mom, there was a lengthy delay between the time the movie was completed and its January 2007 release. Garner doesn?t believe the delay will have any impact on how audiences receive the film.

?I think it's still a great story. I don't think it matters when it comes out,? said Garner. ?It was never certainly for lack of anyone's enthusiasm. It was, I think, because of certainly my enthusiasm that I wanted them to wait. I knew that if this had come out when we first talked about last April - they wanted it to open the last week I'd be shooting Alias which couldn't be moved because of our air date - which was so emotional for me.

And even talking about it in the meetings when they first started talking about it, I said, 'Well, it'll be my last day?' and [blubbering crying]. Right? Wasn't I just in hysteria? So it would have been that and I had a two month old baby. It would by then be a 3 ½, 4 month-old.

I was kind of pulled to the brink just by going to work at all, which at Alias they were being very kind to me. I was working eight hour days. I was with her most of the time. She was at set with me. But traveling with her when she was that new and I was a first time mom, the whole thing kind of overwhelmed me. I didn't want to short shrift Alias and I didn't want to short shrift the movie. So that's kind of how my part of the decision was made, and now I'm just so happy because I can be here and feel good.?

The Appeal of Catch and Release: ?Well, there are always hooks that kind of draw you in, but Susannah Grant's writing is so beautiful. The first time I read it, I knew I had to do it. She asked me to do it. I was beyond excited and something happened where we had to wait a year. I just said, ?I can't let anyone else play this role. It's my role. Please wait for me.? And she said, ?Okay,? and they waited for me. So this has been interrupted a couple of times.

The writing itself is just so beautiful and speakable and playable and real. It's something you just don't get to do. You either are doing a comedy where you're really pushing for the comedy and finding the funny, or you're doing a drama where everything is really maudlin. This is the balance that kind of follows our own life patterns. It just felt to me like something that was true. The things that attracted me to the character were things, for example, that she had seen her fiancé as this prince on a white horse and the idea of black and white and that she only saw good in him. Even when at some point he tried to say, ?Hey, there's something I need to talk to you about,? she didn't want to hear it. She wanted to live in her fantasy. And in going through the hardest thing in herself, she grew up and she was able to learn about the gray, which p.s., it's her name, so I'll give you a little hint.?

Going Through the Stages of Grieving:Catch and Release follows Gray as she goes through the steps of recovering from a huge loss. ?You can lose someone, you can lose your idea of someone, which I think was as hard for her as losing Grady himself, was losing her idea of Grady,? explained Garner. ?So she had to grieve doubly, not just for the loss of her wedding. The very beginning of the movie, her wedding flowers are being brought up to the house and she's standing there at his funeral looking out, just imagining herself in that dress and all the things that were supposed to be happening that day, just on a girl level alone.

And then the fact that the man himself, her partner and her best friend, her boyfriend and forever the only way she knows life, that he is gone. Then her idea of who he was, that he was this straightforward straight and narrow guy who only loved her and never cheated on her, that that has to go away too. But you can go through all that and with the help of friends and with your own introspection, whatever, growing, you can come out better and stronger. That is something that interested me very much.?

Being One of the Only Females in a Mostly Male Cast: That didn?t bother Garner one bit. ?There's nothing better than being a girl in the middle of a group of guys, you know what I mean? It's true. And for women, as hard as it is because there are so many more men's roles than there are women's, typically that's the way it is. Once you get there, you have this big group of guys to play with and they treat you as one of them so I loved it.

Did my relationships with them mirror the ones with the characters? No, not really. It's hard to say that because there was romance and intrigue and tension [in the film] and there was none of that certainly. But was there banter and friendship and them treating me like a dude? Yes, and that was heaven. Although I have to say I think my favorite, well, Kevin Smith is so great but my other favorite, favorite thing about the movie was Juliette Lewis who I think is? Is she a genius or what? She is so funny. The first day of rehearsals she came in and she was like, ?I can't do this. This doesn't make sense to me. I don't think I should be doing this. I can't do this.? And then she would start to talk, and I would just be like, ?Oh, here she is and I think I love you.??

Page 2:Jennifer Garner on Kevin Smith, Motherhood, The Kingdom and Juno