Ben Affleck didn’t plan to be ‘national spokesman for recovering alcoholics’

Ben Affleck opens up in a new interview with GQ about his respect and love for his ex-wives, Jennifer Garner and Jennifer Lopez, his “love” for playing Batman and what it’s like having paparazzi seeming to follow his every move, including when he’s wearing an old T-shirt while running errands or spilling coffee on himself.

Insisting that his life is actually pretty “drama-free,” the 52-year-old actor and director also talked to GZ about being in the news for another very personal struggle: His alcoholism.

In the interview published Tuesday, Affleck said he has been sober for five years, though he said he would have preferred keeping his sobriety “anonymous, because I think it works better than way.” But Affleck, who is promoting his next movie, “The Accountant 2,” said he understands why the issue comes up from time to time.

This was especially the case when he was promoting his 2020 movie, “The Way Back.” In the drama, Affleck played an alcoholic ironworker and former high school basketball star who gets recruited to coach his old team while he’s still drinking heavily and grieving the death of his son.

“I knew with ‘The Way Back,’ like, ‘Okay, look, people know I’m an alcoholic or in recovery, I’m going to have to have a conversation about this,’” Affleck said. “I didn’t really mind that.”

At the same time, Affleck said, “I didn’t have any ambitions to be the national spokesman for recovering alcoholics. And not because I have any shame with it or anything.”

“I just find that, I’ve been sober for more than five years, it’s just not something that is at the forefront of my mind. It’s not the central preoccupation of my life,” Affleck said.

However, when Affleck was filming “The Way Back” in the fall of 2018, he was very new to recovery, as he admitted to GQ. In August 2018, paparazzi and the tabloids reported on Garner, the mother of his three children, entering Affleck’s Pacific Palisades home to stage an intervention. She subsequently driving him to a rehab facility in Los Angeles County. At the time, Affleck and Garner were finalizing their divorce, while he had previously gone to rehab in 2001 and 2017, then relapsed.

“At the time, it was something that I was definitely wrestling with and thinking about,” Affleck conceded to GQ about making “The Way Back,” then promoting it. “And also I was totally aware that my own lived experience meant that I was able to bring something to it that I thought would make it feel more real and connect with people more.”

Again, Affleck said his recovery could have gone easier if the public didn’t know about his drinking problem. But, he said, “I can’t complain about it either. I understood doing this job and doing this life, if something happened like that, people were going to know about it, and they did.”

Affleck also expressed gratitude for having the struggle. He said, “I have arrived at a place where I think of that experience as part of my life in authentically grateful ways, whereas I didn’t think such a thing was possible before. So that sort of is what it is.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Affleck’s comments on Garner should put to rest recent rumors that he wants to get back together with her since his divorce from Lopez last year.  He clearly sees her as a friend and praises her for being “a really good co-parent,” saying “we work together well.”

Affleck’s GQ interview mostly made headlines Tuesday for what he said about Lopez, his other ex-wife. He said there no great “scandal” that led to their high-profile breakup after less than two years of marriage.

“The truth is much more quotidian than probably people would believe or would be interesting,” Affleck said. “There’s no scandal, no soap opera, no intrigue. The truth is, when you talk to somebody, ‘Hey, what happened?’ Well, there is no: ‘This is what happened.’ It’s just a story about people trying to figure out their lives and relationships in ways that we all sort of normally do.”

Affleck also discussed his participation in Lopez’s documentary, “The Greatest Love Story Never Told,” which came out in February 2024, to accompany her new album and a related musical film. The documentary was supposed to be the pop mega-star’s tribute to her romance with Affleck, which first began in the early 2000s. They dated for about three years and became engaged but called off their wedding and broke up in 2004. Nearly two decades later, they revived their romance and got married in 2022.

A major point of contention that Affeck and Lopez address in the documentary was their contrasting views on their public vs. their personal lives. People have speculated that Affleck and Lopez divorced because he couldn’t live with the way she likes to publicize aspects of her personal life..

To GQ, Affleck acknowledged that he’s more “reserved and private” than Lopez but praised her for handling “celebrity more adeptly and more adroitly” than he has. Affleck also admitted that “as happens in relationships, you don’t always have the same attitude towards these things.”

But the “Good Will Hunting” star said he doesn’t judge Lopez for how she wants to be a more public media personality. He also said he has “nothing but respect” for the pop star.

“I guess there’s a tendency to look at breakups and want to identify root causes or something,” Affleck said. “But honestly, like I said, the truth is much more quotidian than probably people would believe or would be interesting.”