Ben Affleck has spoken out for the first time since his public divorce with Jennifer Lopez.
The actor, promoting The Accountant 2, sat down with GQ Magazine for a profile in which he opened up about the split.
The pair first dated in 2002, getting engaged, calling off their relationship in early 2004.
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They then reconciled a few years back, marrying in 2022 and divorcing in 2024.
Affleck admitted the divorce was ‘embarrassing’ to speak about in the interview, in which he also heaped praise on his ex-wife Jennifer Garner.
The topic of the divorce first came up with the GQ interviewer asking about Jennifer Lopez’s documentary, The Greatest Love Story Never Told.
While the documentary follows Lopez through the production of her new album, one aspect in particular that went viral is Affleck’s seemingly beleaguered reaction to their private life being made public within the doc.
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The interviewer asks Affleck about this, who says that he was willing to take part and found her examination ‘interesting’.
He went on to say: “Like I mentioned to you before, 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. As happens in relationships, you don’t always have the same attitude towards these things.”
He goes on to repeat a quote from the documentary, saying: “You don’t marry a ship captain and then say, ‘Well, I don’t like going out in the water.’”
Affleck stresses, however, that this was not the cause of ‘some major fracture’ between the pair.
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Affleck and the interviewer picked up their conversation again a few days later, stressing that he has ‘a lot of respect’ for Lopez.
He went on to say: “I have nothing but respect. I guess there’s a tendency to look at breakups and want to identify root causes or something.”
The Good Will Hunting actor called the break-up ‘quotidian’, meaning it was not just the result of one specific thing.
He said of talking about the breakup: “As you get older, this is true for me, I assume it’s true for most people, there is no ‘So-and-so did this’ or ‘This was the big event.’
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“It’s really, it sounds more like a couple’s therapy session, which—you would tune out of someone else’s couple’s therapy after a while. For one thing, you start going, ‘Okay, clearly this person has got these issues. Clearly, they have these issues.’
“The reason I don’t want to share that is just sort of embarrassing. It feels vulnerable.”
Affleck also spoke out about Jennifer Garner, his ex-wife and co-parent who he has sparked dating rumours with in recent weeks.
The actor was full of praise for Garner, saying: “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.”
Topics: Celebrity, Jennifer Lopez, TV and Film, Film
Michael Slavin