'Biggest Regret Of My Life': Ben Affleck Opens Up About Divorce With Jennifer Garner
In a revealing new interview, Ben Affleck opened up about his drinking, his divorce from Jennifer Garner and the pressures that saw him exit 'The Batman'.
Speaking to The New York Times, the 47-year-old revealed how his drinking had contributed to the downfall of his marriage.
"I drank relatively normally for a long time," he told the NYT. "I started drinking more and more when my marriage was falling apart. This was 2015, 2016.
"My drinking, of course, created more marital problems."
Calling the divorce the "biggest regret" of his life, Affleck said he struggled with the toxicity of shame.
"There is no byproduct of shame," he said, "It's just stewing in a toxic, hideous feeling of low self-worth and self-loathing."
In October 2018, Affleck posted a public statement after spending time in a rehabilitation centre.
Almost a year later, after he was seen struggling to walk out of a party, the actor posted that he was making a donation to The Midnight Mission, which seeks to help those suffering from homelessness and recovery.
"It’s not particularly healthy for me to obsess over the failures -- the relapses -- and beat myself up,” he said in the NYT interview.
"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."
Affleck and Garner share three children together, and the pair have maintained a relationship since the divorce -- with Garner staging the 2018 intervention.
"People with compulsive behaviour, and I am one, have this kind of basic discomfort all the time that they’re trying to make go away," he continued.
"You’re trying to make yourself feel better with eating or drinking or sex or gambling or shopping or whatever.
"But that ends up making your life worse. Then you do more of it to make that discomfort go away. Then the real pain starts. It becomes a vicious cycle you can’t break. That’s at least what happened to me."
The actor also spoke about the pressures following his stint as Batman in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and the critically panned Justice League -- which Affleck was an executive producer on.
The rumours had been that Affleck had departed the upcoming solo flick The Batman due to script issues, but in the candid interview the actor claimed that wasn't the case. He revealed that friends were concerned he may 'drink himself to death' if he went through with another superhero flick.
His earlier remarks around when he began "drinking more and more" -- 2015, 2016 -- fall around the time of filming Batman v Superman and Justice League's production.
"I showed somebody The Batman script," he said. "They said, ‘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."
After Affleck stepped down as the star, writer and director of The Batman, it was announced early last year that War of the Planet of the Apes writer/director Matt Reeves would be stepping up.
In May 2019 it was also revealed that Robert Pattinson would be stepping into the Batsuit.
Featured image: Getty Images.
