Ben Affleck talks unfiltered about his relationship with Jennifer Lopez and Jennifer Garner and shocks everyone

Ben Affleck spoke to GQ in a recent interview, his first since his high-profile divorce with Jennifer Lopez. The actor opened up on his relationship with the singer-songwriter and admitted that his main focus nowadays is his children.

The Daredevil star - sorry to bring that film up without a trigger warning - let readers in on how he manages his co-parenting relationship with Jennifer Garner, who was married to Affleck between 2005 and 2018, and gave the real lowdown on his Batman era.

“There’s nothing newsworthy at all about the day-to-day events of my life or the conversation I have with one person or another person that’s photographed”, Affleck began by saying when asked about his approach to fame.

“And often it’s like the big trick is to say So-and-so does this amid that, imply some correlation between the two. In other words, some broad event is taking place in some way, whether globally or around this person’s life. And look, here they are frustrated with the parking meter. I’m definitely aware of the cosmic joke of it all. What I’ve ended up focusing on is: Look, I know what’s going on in my life. And also, really more importantly, my kids know."

“I’m really lucky that I have a really good co-parent and partner in Jennifer Garner, the kids’ mom, who’s wonderful and great and we work together well. It’s more of a headache than anything else, and there certainly are worse things.”

‘People are used to a more curated image of me’

Lopez filed for divorce from Affleck back in August last year and, let’s be honest, the press went wild. Rumours flooded the tabloids and news websites with apparent reasons for the split. One particularly strong rumour was the the couple went their separate ways as they both had different approaches to fame. Affleck said that this is not the case.

In fact, on being a celebrity, Affleck said that his life is actually quite ‘normal’: “people are accustomed to a more presented, curated image. My life is actually pretty drama-free... I’m sure in your mind you’re thinking, Oh, well, you just got divorced. That’s not drama-free. And I understand that instinct, but all of this is pretty adult, and for all the sensational stuff that gets written, if somebody sat down and talked to me about it, and I said, “Well, this is really the experience,” their eyes would glaze over with boredom."

“There are a lot of people who I think have handled celebrity more adeptly and more adroitly than I have, Jennifer among them. My temperament is to be a little bit more reserved and private than hers,” he explained. “As happens in relationships, you don’t always have the same attitude toward these things. And so I thought, Oh, this is interesting because how do you reconcile that?”

‘I think: Oh f*** it, I just want to get the coffee’

On his way of handling fame, Affleck, given his experience at the top, is way past caring: “So I’ll go out and pick up the packages or deliveries and I don’t really care that people are there to take my picture. And some people are probably, I guess you’d call them smarter or more strategic because they think, well: ‘I don’t want to be seen wearing some T-shirt or spilling some drink.’ And I just think: Oh f*** it, man, I could give a shit. I just want to get the coffee.”

When asked about Batman, the actor was honest and frank to the interviewer, saying that he was attracted to “the idea and the ambition” of an older Bruce Wayne, but added how the new spin on things began to “skew too old for a big part of the audience.”

“Even my own son at the time was too scared to watch the movie", he admitted. “And so when I saw that I was like, ‘Oh shit, we have a problem.’ Then I think that’s when you had a filmmaker that wanted to continue down that road and a studio that wanted to recapture all the younger audience at cross purposes. Then you have two entities, two people really wanting to do something different and that is a really bad recipe”, he concluded.

Related stories

Obituaries

Richard Chamberlain, “King of the Miniseries,” dies at age 90

Politics

Marsch warned for attacking Trump

Get your game on! Whether you’re into NFL touchdowns, NBA buzzer-beaters, world-class soccer goals, or MLB home runs, our app has it all.

Dive into live coverage, expert insights, breaking news, exclusive videos, and more – plus, stay updated on the latest in current affairs and entertainment. Download now for all-access coverage, right at your fingertips – anytime, anywhere.