Jennifer Garner’s mane man? Her hairstylist of course

When Jennifer Garner appears on Zoom, she looks endearingly “undone”. Wearing a striped multicoloured jumper and sitting at the table of her Californian kitchen, she radiates a fresh-faced beauty from behind thick-rimmed glasses. Her hair, meanwhile, looks just-washed. “Thank you so much for blow-drying it this morning,” laughs Adir Abergel, Garner’s long-term friend, hairstylist and collaborator at haircare label Virtue Labs. He is dressed in shorts and wears his customary wide-brimmed hat. 

“I did dry it for just a second,” says the actor. It’s fair to say that she’s not the world’s most attentive self-groomer: during lockdown Abergel would help her to do her own hair for press events via a video call. “I would get so frustrated because I’d never held a curling iron the right way. In my own life, this is as good as it gets,” she says. “It’s clean.” 

The two have known each other since 2001. Abergel first met Garner when he was booked for a promotional photoshoot. “At the time I was working in the music world – with people like Britney Spears, Missy Elliott, TLC and Jewel – and Jen was on Alias,” he says of the five-season TV series in which Garner played CIA agent Sydney Bristow, a breakout role that earned her a Golden Globe Award. 

The Texas-born 52-year-old star’s career has spanned romantic comedy – from the 20-year-old 13 Going on 30 and 2007 indie flick Juno to the more recent Netflix family romp Yes Day – and superhero Marvel drama. This summer, Garner steps out as Lycra-clad Elektra Natchios, a role she first played in 2003’s Daredevil and which she now reprises in the newly released Deadpool & Wolverine, alongside Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds. 

Along the way there’s been marriage, three children, and a divorce from Ben Affleck; reams of tabloid column inches – and anti-paparazzi campaigns. Of her red-carpet moments, a standout was at the Oscars in 2008, wearing a black taffeta Oscar de la Renta dress, she recalls. “I think I was in really good shape or something because I remember that thing fitting like a glove, and then Adir cut a long bang.” 

But for her 16.3mn Instagram followers, she is more often than not the charmingly goofy host of her at-home Pretend Cooking Show – a low-key cook-along of recipe-book meals – or “Farmer Jen”, in dungarees, promoting her interest in Once Upon a Farm, a range of organic baby food.

My kids want me to look like me

At all junctures, Abergel has styled her accordingly. “I always try to do whatever is right for her lifestyle, and Jen is someone that is wash-and-go. She’s very practical, on the phone at 5am, calling every single senator for Save the Children,” he says, referencing Garner’s long-held position as board member for the charity. “But actually, when you look at [our] body of work together, the evolution is there. It’s like bangs, no bangs, long hair, shorter hair. It’s just maybe not what we think of as…” 

“It’s not like what you do with Kristen Stewart,” says Garner. “She’s so brave. But my kids want me to look like me. Adir’s not going to give me an asymmetrical bob.” 

Abergel laughs: “Or the bowl cut that mom gave you when you were young! Although, when we did the Allure magazine covers last year, I did give you that Dorothy Hamill,” he adds, referring to the American figure skater’s 1970s wedge cut that inspired one of the seven striking wigs Abergel created for the editorial shoot. “And you were feeling it!”

Best tressed – Garner’s great hair moments

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Born in Israel, Abergel moved to California aged eight to live with his aunt. His initiation into the world of hairstyling came shortly after. “When I was about 10 years old I would blow-dry all of my aunt’s friends’ hair to make extra money,” he recalls. “I would make five dollars a blow-out.” More famous clients soon followed when, at the age of 15, he began an apprenticeship at Beverly Hills’ Salon Aniko. “It was crazy. I didn’t realise that they had all these incredible clients like Tina Turner, Chaka Khan, Olivia Newton-John, Julie Christie and Diahann Carroll…” 

“And Nancy Reagan!” bursts out Garner excitedly. “I love this story.” 

“And Betsy Bloomingdale,” adds Abergel of the legendary LA socialite. “All these beautiful, powerful, wonderful women kind of became my surrogate mothers.” 

Today, Abergel’s clientele is no less starry. Besides Garner and Stewart, his Hollywood regulars include Florence Pugh, Anne Hathaway, Saoirse Ronan, Marion Cotillard and Charlize Theron. For the 2024 Met Gala, he looked after Jessica Biel and Nicole Kidman. “There’s a reason that Adir is booked for the Academy Awards before women have wrapped their movies,” says Garner. “Yes, Adir is an artist, but it’s not just that the work is stellar. It’s love, comfort, trust. It’s more than gossiping with your buddy, more than ‘I can tell them all my secrets, and they stop here’. It’s like, he’s got you. And by the way, he sees your housekeeper and he’s got her. And he sees your assistant and he sees your parents, too.”

Abergel’s connection with Garner has become a family affair. When her 18-year-old daughter Violet had portraits taken to mark her senior year in high school, “she was like, ‘Mom, there’s one thing I want: I want Adir to do my hair.’ And we are not a family that’s like, ‘OK, let’s get your hair blown out.’ That’s the one blow-out that kid has ever had.” 

Meanwhile, Garner’s 86-year-old mother, Patricia – who recently starred in the Pretend Cooking Show, where she prepared “Grandmom Corn” – “thinks Adir is her own personal hairstylist”, says Garner. He tended to her father, too. “My father just passed away, and when he was going through surgeries, Adir came and cut his hair, and just the way my dad felt… Adir is like a gifted body worker.” 

Currently, Garner is preparing to shoot the second season of the TV thriller The Last Thing He Told Me – and “trying to take a minute and be available for my family”, she says. Abergel, meanwhile, is making time for his mentoring programme in which he guides other hairdressers in the craft. “I’m also working on a secret project with my husband, who is a Harvard scientist,” he adds. 

When Abergel was approached to work with North Carolina-based haircare label Virtue Labs, his husband, Marcelo Freire, also got involved. “I put him to work to look at all of the patents and all of the results,” he says of the products based around Alpha Keratin 60ku – a reparative “hair-identical protein”. 

“We definitely geeked out over this,” says Garner, who has partnered with Virtue Labs alongside Abergel. “We were saying bioidentical before bioidentical was cool. I was a chemistry major for a year in college – my dad was a chemical engineer – until my mom was like, ‘Jennifer, it seems to me that you really like theatre.’”

If Garner’s lackadaisical approach to hairstyling makes her an unlikely ambassador, she puts a good spin on it. “If you are going to not be good at your hair, then you need your hair to be as good as it can be,” she smiles, pointing to the brand’s Damage Reverse Serum ($60). “I just made that up for you!” 

Next up in the Virtue Labs roster is its Flourish Thickening Styling Treatment (£44, spacenk.com from 15 August), whose volumising properties Abergel passionately extols. He reserves the highest praise for his collaborator, however. “The minute I knew there was an opportunity for us to work together, it was a no-brainer,” says Abergel. “I would do anything with Jennifer Garner.”