Ben Affleck Says His Life Experiences Like Alcoholism and Divorce With Jennifer Garner Are Helping Him Become a Better Actor

Life isn't always easy. And that's a lesson you learn as you grow older. It's got its crazy ups and its crazier downs. How do you look at the things that happened in your life? When you grow up and you mature as you experience these things, you'll be grateful for those moments that helped make you who you are. And it looks like actor Ben Affleck is learning just that along the way. Affleck and Jennifer Garner first dated in 2004 and got married a year later. The pair had announced their separation in 2015 and filed for divorce in 2018. They currently co-parent their three kids: daughters Violet, 15, and Seraphina, 12, and son Samuel, 8, reports PEOPLE.

The 48-year-old had previously told the New York Times of his split with Jennifer Garner. "The biggest regret of my life is this divorce." Speaking of his dark days as he battled alcohol addiction while married to the Alias star, he revealed, "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. I drank relatively normally for a long time. What happened was that I started drinking more and more when my marriage was falling apart. This was 2015, 2016. My drinking, of course, created more marital problems." But the Justice League actor is learning to not beat himself up over past mistakes. "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.”

In 2020 Affleck was in the film, The Way Back, a story that strangely drew parallels to his own life in many ways. He played the role of a high school basketball coach struggling to keep his life together as he battled alcohol addiction while dealing with a failed marriage. Now the actor admits that his real-life experiences definitely helped shaped his career. "I'll be 50 in two years," the actor shared, according to The Hollywood Reporter. His role as a grieving alcoholic in Gavin O'Connor's The Way Back won him much praise for his performance. "I have three children I want to spend time with, I have a life that I really enjoy, and I want to really love my work and tell these kinds of stories, with characters that are as rich as the ones that you all portrayed."

Taking about the 2020 film, Affleck said, "For me, the movie was much more about the fact that — whether it's having lived enough years, having seen enough ups and downs, having had children and divorce — I'm at a point now in my life where I have sufficient life experience to bring to a role to make it really interesting for me." Affleck pointed out that those experiences made him a better actor. "Growing older and having had more intense and meaningful personal experiences has made acting much more interesting for me and in turn made me drawn to the kinds of movies that are about people who are flawed," he added.

The actor previously confessed to Good Morning America's Diane Sawyer that he never wanted to be divorced from 48-year-old Garner. "I didn't want to get divorced, I didn't want to be a divorced person, I really didn't want to be a split family with my children," he shared at the time. "It upset me because it meant I wasn't who I thought I was and that was so painful and so disappointing. In myself."

It's clear the former couple has grown as individuals and is putting differences aside if there were any. Garner and Affleck are doing their best to be great parents to their kids. Garner had previously told Vanity Fair that she had "lost the dream of dancing with (her) husband at (her) daughter's wedding.” But now things have changed. “When our kids get married, we’ll dance, I know that now,” the mom of three shared in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter. "We'll boogaloo and have a great time. I don't worry about that anymore." They're really come so far.

References:

https://people.com/movies/ben-affleck-divorce-jennifer-garner-made-him-better-actor/

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/18/movies/ben-affleck.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/actors-roundtable-ben-affleck-sacha-baron-cohen-delroy-lindo-gary-oldman-john-david-washington-and-steven-yeun-on-their-liberating-roles

https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/culture/video/ben-affleck-shares-moved-struggles-alcohol-part-69095953

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/jennifer-garner-on-acting-return-possible-alias-reboot-and-being-among-hollywoods-most-likable-stars

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2016/02/jennifer-garner-talks-kids-career-ben-affleck

Cover image source: Getty Images | Photo by (L) Jason Merritt/ (R) Frazer Harrison