LOS ANGELES–Jennifer Garner may appear to be living the most glamorous life imaginable, but they don't call Hollywood Tinseltown for nothing. Beneath the glitter there are bruises, both literal and figurative.

In The Kingdom, which opens next Friday (September 28) in Vancouver, Garner plays an FBI agent who is one of four forensic experts sent to Saudi Arabia to find the killers of a hundred Americans murdered by a bomb explosion in a housing compound. Garner's character has to play rough with suspects linked to the terrorist group that has taken credit for the killings. In an L.A. interview room, she says that because she had just had a daughter with husband Ben Affleck, she and her long-time stuntwoman, Shauna Duggins, were concerned about how much physical activity she could endure during filming.

"If Shauna says something is safe, I'm gonna do it. We did have a rule in this one particular fight that because I was breast-feeding, he [the other actor] had to stay away from my boobs, and he did. That was the one sacred kind of thing. He could go for my head and he could pull my hair–just not the boobs. But what are a couple of bruises [to a baby]? She doesn't care."

The hot Phoenix, Arizona, location temperatures did take their toll, however. Garner says that although things weren't as dramatic as reported in some newspapers, she was tired after several scenes and checked into a local hospital.

"I spent two nights in the hospital. Out of all the stuff I've ever done, I had never gone down before. I never fainted or anything like that. It was, 'Jennifer Garner collapsed on the set.' But I just was dizzy and I didn't feel right. When we were on our way home I said, 'I feel not right enough that I don't know if I can pick up my child, so let's just go get me checked out.' It turned out that after all was said and done, it was too hot and I was in the heat for too long every day to still be breast-feeding. So I slipped into a heat stroke. I had a couple of nights where I didn't feel so good, and they gave me a shot, and then I felt better."

Although she has done well in Hollywood, Garner says that her own success doesn't necessarily mean that women are getting better-quality roles. She says that it's unlikely there will ever be true gender equality in filmmaking.

"How many men are there in every film? How many women are there? One! That is every single movie. I mean, any time an actress gets to work with another actress, it's like, 'Oh, there are two of us in a movie! How are you? Let's sit in the hair chair together!' We're lonely. Women get screwed in this industry. It is hard to find good roles [for women] at all, much less strong ones."