Ben Affleck says one of his teenage sons wasted no time putting him in his place after he tried to offer relationship advice at the dinner table.
Appearing on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!,” the 54-year-old actor said he’s had to accept that fatherhood hasn’t turned him into the parent he expected to be. “I’ll give you an example,” Affleck told Kimmel. “My kids are talking at dinner, and they’ll talk about their friends and the drama and the relationships and I have some lived experience I think that’s worth sharing, some lessons … these are the kind of things we give to our children.”
But when he tried to weigh in on a relationship issue, his 17-year-old wasn’t having it. “The 17-year-old just turns to me and goes, ‘Oh, like you’re the expert on relationships?'” Affleck recalled.
Affleck shares three children — Violet, 20, Fin, 17, and Samuel, 14 — with his ex-wife, actress Jennifer Garner. The two were married for more than a decade before separating in 2015 and finalizing their divorce in 2018.
Since then, Affleck’s dating life has drawn plenty of headlines. He’s been linked to “Saturday Night Live” alum Lindsay Shookus and Playboy model Shauna Sexton, and in 2019 he began dating actress Ana de Armas, a relationship that lasted until early 2021. He later reconnected with former fiancée Jennifer Lopez, whom he had first dated from 2002 to 2004.
Affleck and Lopez confirmed their reunion in 2021, went Instagram official that July, got engaged in April 2022 and married in July 2022. At the time, Lopez wrote in her newsletter, “We really live our lives in a way we can be proud of and our kids can be proud of you. We’re just operating from a place of love and respect for everyone in our lives and that is very important to us. We know what the truth is [and] we hold it sacred.”
The marriage lasted just over two years before Lopez filed for divorce in August 2024.
Garner turned down a role opposite Affleck
During the same Kimmel appearance, Affleck revealed that Garner had been approached to play his love interest in his new film, “Animals,” but declined.
“Jen was like, ‘Great, but no, I’m not gonna play your wife in a movie,'” Affleck said. “[It’s] probably for the best. That lesson has been learned.”
Kerry Washington ultimately took the role. Affleck directed and co-wrote the film, which follows a husband and wife who go to extreme lengths to pay their son’s ransom.
