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Jennifer Garner: George Clooney didn't want Ben Affleck and I at wedding because of head lice

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Jennifer Garner has a simple explanation for why she and Ben Affleck weren't at George Clooney's wedding to Amal Alamuddin. The Dallas Buyers Club actress says head lice were to blame. The mother-of-three said the first time she ever met Hollywood's hottest heart-throb she was fighting an outbreak among her children and had put a strong smelling lice treatment on her hair.

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The first time Jennifer Garner ever met George Clooney she had head lice

She said husband Ben Affleck chose that night to persuade her to go to a smart Hollywood party where she met George for the first time. Jennifer told the funny anecdote as she appeared on a US talk show. "We all got lice. It's making me itchy just to talk about it."

"This was years ago. They have people like the Lice Lady, and they come over and they comb painstakingly through your hair, and then they put something on your hair..."  "You smell a little bit like a mixture of sulfur and rosemary. And you do it everyday for a month!"

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Ben Affleck and George Clooney are friends and collaborators

Jennifer added: "Ben had showered. He came out and he said, 'Hey, um, there's a party. I wanna go. Let's go.' And I said, 'I can't. I need to shower.' I mean, I'm in, like, cargo pants. I'm nasty in a thousand [ways]. He's like, 'Come on! I mean, we have a babysitter. I want you to come with me.' 

"So, I get in the car and I go with him because he acted like I was going to be high maintenance. I don't ever want to be called high maintenance. I am not a high maintenance chick! So I'm like, "What's the big deal? No one's gonna notice. "We show up and the first person I see is George Clooney, and I'd never met George Clooney. I was kind of like, 'Ah, he's so handsome! Like, oh, my God!' So, I see him and I walk up to him and I'm chatting with him, just trying to act like it's cool...and I can see that he smells me, you know? But he's trying to be polite."

amal © Photo: Getty Images

Unfortunately the Afflecks missed George Clooney's wedding last weekend

Despite this inauspicious beginning the couple have gone on to be good friends with George. In 2012, the two men even teamed up to produce Ben's Oscar-winning film Argo.

So it's likely that the Afflecks would have gone to the Venice extravaganza if they could. Unfortunately Jennifer has been hard at work promoting Alexander And The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day  Meanwhile, her husband's film Gone Girl premiered in New York over the weekend. That hasn't stopped people speculating about their no show. Jennifer said: "So, anyway, people keep asking why we weren't at George's wedding and we were both 'working' but I think he didn't want Licey there. He's like, "No, we don't need the Afflecks. We're OK!"