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She's the all-kicking, all-punching double agent from Sky's 'Alias'. You can look, but you'd better not touch
WORDS Brendan Vaughan PHOTOGRAPHS Stephen Danelian

JENNIFER GARNER ADMITS that Sydney Bristow, the double agent she plays on ABC's Alias, might lose a fight with some of her peers in the ass-kicking-women genre. "Buffy has supernatural powers, the Dark Angel is genetically altered, and Lara Croft has those guns in her socks," she notes. "But mano a mano? If it was just fists and kicks? I'd say they'd have to get up pretty early."

Damn right. Mercifully, though, Alias isn't about empowerment. It's about payback. And Garner is no teenybopper. She's a twenty-nine-year-old woman. Here she roars

ESQ: Is pummeling people with your hands and feet something that comes naturally?

JG: It's becoming more natural, yeah. I'm starting to have all these violent dreams. The other night the alarm went off in our house-the dog somehow set it off-and my husband, Scott, and I were creeping down the hall to make sure no one was in the house. He had a baseball bat, and I was behind him, and I was thinking, What can I do first? Elbow? Knee to the crotch? Backspin hook kick? So it's definitely bleeding over.

ESQ: Scott must love it when you rough him up a little.

JG: You know, I almost wish he did, but he is so uninterested in my new . . . abilities. He's pretty well taken care of by Jennifer, so he's not that interested in the whole Sydney thing. But if he ever acted up, I would bloody his nose so fast. . . .

ESQ: Have there been any particulary gory mishaps on the set?

JG: Well, my first stunt double, Dana Hee, is out for the season, after her second injury. She ripped her ACL [knee muscle] after doing this beautiful jump spin kick off a rock. She won the gold medal in martial arts at the Seoul Olympics. But for me, knock on wood, so far so good.

ESQ: No missing teeth?

JG: Just a lot of bruises, but I wear those like a badge of honour. I got out of the shower this morning, and I said "Scott, you want to see my bruises?" He said, "Jen, I hate when you show me your bruises," and I said, "But you're the only one who can see them at all!" When I get to this photo shoot, I guarantee the make-up artist will have some serious work to do.

ESQ: Do you ever get to improvise? You know, put your personal signature on the fights?

JG: It's all pretty choreographed, but the storyboard is a guideline; it's not etched in stone. if I'm fighting Anna [Espinosa, of rival agency K-Directorate] in a cave, the confines of a cave you know, you can't really take that nito account when you're planning a fight. So they'll say. "You're gonna do this jump spin kick," but then we get there and I'm in four-inch heels, and I'm in dirt, and I'll say, "OK, we're gonna do a spin kick without the jump," you know?

ESQ: Who would win in a fight between Martha Stewart and Condoleezza Rice?

JG: Martha, without a doubt. I wouldn't tussle with Martha.