Ben Affleck Reveals Why He Hated Playing Batman

Ben Affleck has never exactly been shy about voicing his displeasure over his stint playing Batman. But during a recent interview, he opened up a bit more about just why it was such an "excruciating experience" for him.

Affleck first appeared as Batman in the 2016 film "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice." He later returned to play the masked superhero in the films "Justice League" and "The Flash." But he's made it pretty clear that he did not enjoy his experience.

During a 2022 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Affleck said that playing Batman was “awful” and “the worst experience.” And during a recent interview with GQ Magazine for their April cover story, he elaborated a bit on just why exactly it was so bad.

“There are a number of reasons why that was a really excruciating experience,” Affleck told GQ. “And they don’t all have to do with the simple dynamic of, say, being in a superhero movie or whatever. I am not interested in going down that particular genre again, not because of that bad experience, but just: I’ve lost interest in what was of interest about it to me. But I certainly wouldn’t want to replicate an experience like that. A lot of it was misalignment of agendas, understandings, expectations. And also by the way, I wasn’t bringing anything particularly wonderful to that equation at the time, either. I had my own failings, significant failings, in that process and at that time.”

Affleck admitted that he did not exactly help the situation with his attitude.

“I mean, my failings as an actor, you can watch the various movies and judge,” he said. “But more of my failings of, in terms of why I had a bad experience, part of it is that what I was bringing to work every day was a lot of unhappiness. So I wasn’t bringing a lot of positive energy to the equation. I didn’t cause problems, but I came in and I did my job and I went home. But you’ve got to do a little bit better than that.”

Affleck is now trying to help other actors avoid a similar experience as he runs the production company Artists Equity.

“I want to put together partnerships and filmmakers and cast and a studio apparatus that’s aligned, where precisely that kind of misalignment doesn’t happen and you have a much better work experience,” Affleck said.

Affleck did say that he enjoyed some of the creative approach he took to playing “sort of older, broken, damaged Bruce Wayne.” But it's clear that he largely hated the project.