In the mid to late 90’s Ben Affleck’s face was everywhere. What makes his career so interesting is that he didn’t get pigeonholed or typecast into one kind of movie or another. Affleck was in comedies, action-flicks, and dramas. He was in everything from Oscar winning movies like Good Will Hunting to blockbuster flicks like Armageddon. The 00’s made him an even bigger star and saw him doing more action films like Sum of All Fears while still doing dramedies with buddy Kevin Smith in Jersey Girl.
But it wasn’t his acting talent (or lack thereof to some critics) that kept him in the limelight. Ben Affleck was a partier. He was young, rich, famous, and connected. It’s not unusual for actors and other types of celebrities to get carried away in their fame and Affleck was no exception.
Again, acting and drinking wasn’t the only thing that made him famous, either. His dating life was all the rage. Especially when serial dater/wife Jennifer Lopez came into his life. By the time Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck were engaged, the singer/actress has already been married twice!
In total, Jennifer Lopez as of today has been married three times and engaged on at least five different occasions.
She started dating Affleck when they met on the film set of Gigli, a movie that tanked hard in the box office. Affleck and Lopez were engaged from 2002 to 2004. Though they split amicably, Lopez immediately married singer Marc Anthony in the same year that she and Ben broke up. They split in 2011 and then were divorced in 2014.
Because of Lopez’s constant relationship status changes, Affleck remained in the headlines as well, as publications followed his own love-life in hopes of seeing something dramatic. (They were probably looking for another Brangelina to sell their gossip rags). In 2005, he married Daredevil co-star Jennifer Garner. Again, the two met while filming a movie that critics and fans alike panned as one of the worst superhero movies ever produced. (Let’s be honest, Spider-Man 3 with the Venom and Sandman is the worst superhero movie ever).
After three kids and a battle with the married life, superstardom, and drinking, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner finalized their divorce in 2018. Garner even drove Affleck to a rehabilitation center so that he could get control of his addiction. While both celebrities have insisted that they are on good terms and that they get along well, tabloids and headlines have begged to differ.
It didn’t help when Ben Affleck went onto the Howard Stern show and seemingly blamed all his struggles with alcoholism on being “trapped” in his marriage. He even stated that if he were still married to Garner, he’d still be drunk.
“We probably would’ve ended up at each other’s throats. I probably still would’ve been drinking,” Affleck, 49, recently said on SiriusXM’s “The Howard Stern Show.”
“Part of why I started drinking was because I was trapped.”
Affleck, who went to rehab for alcoholism in 2018, continued, “I was like, ‘I can’t leave because of my kids, but I’m not happy, what do I do?’ And what I did was [I] drank a bottle of scotch and fell asleep on the couch, which turned out not to be the solution.”
Outraged and shocked by the man’s comments, Piers Morgan sounded off on what he called “narcissistic” and a “self-indulgent orgy” of an interview.
“Really, Ben? That’s why you got blind drunk every night? It was all Jennifer’s fault for trapping you?
“This excuse might have carried marginally more credence if Affleck hadn’t been a notorious hell-raising drinker for many years before he ever met Garner,” Morgan stated emphatically.
He continued his lecture with…“Ben Affleck did what he’s done throughout his life – he blamed someone else for his own behavior, and in blaming Jennifer Garner, he ensured their kids will now read lurid headlines that suggest this may have been the real reason why he was such a stinking deadbeat, drunken husband and father for so long. The truth is that Affleck had a massive drink problem before he met their mum, while he was with her, and after he left her.”
Morgan finished with… “Even by Hollywood standards, this is astonishingly selfish and self-centered conduct, but hardly surprising from a supremely narcissistic 49-year-old man who recently inked a ludicrous gigantic tattoo of a rising phoenix all over his back in a clear sign that he’s having a pitiful mid-life crisis. It’s also a sign that Ben Affleck’s had one great love of his life and it’s neither of the Jennifers… It’s himself.”
Of course, Ben Affleck responded and has of course insisted that his comments were misconstrued to make him sound bad. He claimed the press has made it sound like “[I] blamed my ex-wife for my alcoholism and that I was trapped in this marriage… just made me out to be like the worst, most insensitive, stupid, awful guy,” E News reported. “That’s not true. I don’t believe that. It’s the exact opposite of who I am, what I believe and I would never want my kids to think I would ever say a bad word about their mom… it hurts my feelings.”
This story syndicated with permission from For the Love of News