Jennifer Garner: "I Live My Life At Two Extremes"

Jennifer Garner may look the part of a stunning starlet on the cover of the new issue of W magazine, but during the interview - two days before Halloween - she had other things on her mind. Like costumes! Violet would be going as Ariel from The Little Mermaid, Seraphina (who goes by 'Sera') as her fish friend Flounder and dad Ben Affleck as King Triton. As for Jen, she says that dressing up as dogs Fred and Ted with Violet while pregnant last year "bought her a pass" this time around.

When she's not filming, the very hands-on mom says that her days consist of “getting the kids up and fed, getting one to school, getting the other down for a nap, going to the grocery store, picking one up from school, getting the other one down for another nap, cooking dinner. I live my life at these two extremes. I’m either a full-time stay-at-home mom or a full-time actress.”

Hollywood wasn't a lifelong pursuit for the West Virgina-born star. In fact, when she started attending Denison College she had hopes of becoming a doctor (something she still daydreams about: "When my daughter has a fever, I want to be able to look in her ears myself and not have to call someone. I want to be able to tell, Is that spot on her leg ringworm or a dry patch?”). But she became heavily involved in the drama program and after graduation moved to New York to give Broadway a shot. Eventually she landed a spot on the hit show Felicity and the rest, as they say, is history.

Though she tends to keep her personal life just that, Jennifer does open up a bit about her husband Ben, whom she married in 2005. Of their decision to start a family - they are parents to gorgeous girls Violet, 4, and Seraphina, 11 months - she says: “We were together a year, and we just started breeding. We were like, ‘Let’s have a baby!’ And eight days later...”

Hopefully her very private hubby won't mind her spilling that info! “Ben asks me, ‘How come when I do an interview I manage to keep you out of it completely?’” she says. “And I’m like, ‘Either because you don’t think about me or because boy magazines don’t care about what I make you for dinner. But they should!’”

Motherhood certainly seems to be a perfect fit for Jennifer, who calls breastfeeding “the coziest feeling in the world," gushes about the fast friendships she's made with other moms at Violet's preschool and admits to being a tiny bit obsessed with making her own baby food ("I tell myself, Just give her a jar of food and forget about it! Don’t be so precious! But it’s so easy—I just puree and freeze.").

It does have its challenges, of course - namely trying to balance both being there for her girls and maintaining her career. She's the first to point out that she has help, though - then adds, “Does that sound snotty, to say I have help?”­

"I have this internal battle between, I need to work, I need to work, I need to work and I need to be home with my kids. And the kids win,” she says.

Jen will be on screen next in the star-studded romantic comedy, Valentine's Day.