Ben Affleck’s called his divorce from Jennifer Garner his ‘biggest regret’ in a candid new interview which explored his struggle with alcoholism, and it devastating impact his addiction had on his marriage and career.
The actor, 47, speaking with the New York Times Tuesday, opened up about the pain he felt amid the end of his marriage to Garner, 47, with their June 2015 separation.
‘The biggest regret of my life is this divorce,’ he said while plugging his new film The Way Back. ‘Shame is really toxic. There is no positive byproduct of shame. It’s just stewing in a toxic, hideous feeling of low self-worth and self-loathing.’
The latest: Ben Affleck, 47, speaking with the New York Times Tuesday, opened up about the pain he felt amid the end of his marriage to Jennifer Garner, 47, with their June 2015 separation
The father-of-three – to daughters Violet, 14, and Seraphina, 11, and son Samuel, seven, with the Alias actress, said he ‘drank relatively normally for a long time’ in the wake of their split.
‘What happened was that I started drinking more and more when my marriage was falling apart,’ he told the paper.
He added: ‘This was 2015, 2016. My drinking, of course, created more marital problems.’
The Argo star would go on to enter a rehabilitation facility for alcohol addiction in August of 2018, saying, ‘I am fighting for myself and my family,’ in a social media post two months later about his efforts to remain sober.
Out and about: The one-time Batman was snapped sipping a coffee in LA last May
Moving forward: Ben said that he decided to bow out of The Batman after a friend advised he would drink himself to death if things got complicated with the film
Elsewhere in the chat, Affleck said that the drinking issues played a part in his announcement he would stop playing Batman early last year.
Affleck said he he ‘showed somebody The Batman script’ and was told in response, ‘I think the script is good. I also think you’ll drink yourself to death if you go through what you just went through again.’
He told the paper that he keeps a positive mindset in moving forward amid life’s ups and downs.
‘It’s not particularly healthy for me to obsess over the failures – the relapses – and beat myself up,’ he said. ‘I have certainly made mistakes. I have certainly done things that I regret.
‘But you’ve got to pick yourself up, learn from it, learn some more, try to move forward.’
A look back: Ben Affleck chat last year with Ellen about his back tattoo. He said he lied to Extra about it in 2016 because he got ‘a kick out of messing with Extra’
Keep on truckin’: The A-lister, snapped in 2017 in LA, told the paper that he keeps a positive mindset in moving forward amid life’s ups and downs
In recent years, the star of films such as Argo, Justice League and Armageddon has been in romances with Lindsay Shookus, a 39-year-old producer for Saturday Night Live; and Shauna Sexton, a 24-year-old model who’s been seen in Playboy.
Affleck also opened up to the paper about why he lied to Extra’s Mario Lopez in 2016 about getting a large tattoo on his back of a Phoenix, claiming it was ‘fake for a movie.’
He added to Lopez: ‘I actually do have a number of tattoos… but I try to have them in places where you don’t have to do a lot of cover up.’
Speaking with the paper about the fib Tuesday, Affleck said, ‘I guess I got a kick out of messing with Extra.’
He said, ‘I resented that somebody got a picture of it by spying on me. It felt invasive. But you’re right. I could have said, “That’s none of your business.” Is your tattoo real or not real? Of course it’s real! No, I put a fake tattoo on my back and then hid it.’
The Way Back arrives in theaters March 6.