Ben Affleck Once Referred to 2003 as the ‘Annus Horribilis of My Life’
Ben Affleck was the subject of much negative attention thanks to his relationship with Jennifer Lopez at the dawn of tabloid culture. Starring in a string of films that didn’t do too well at the box-office only added to his problems.
Because of these issues, Affleck didn’t look back at the year 2003 too fondly.
Ben Affleck called the media scrutiny against him ‘out of whack’
Affleck and Lopez’s first relationship lasted from 2002 to 2004. At the height of their time together, the two became the focus of tabloid culture at a time when that culture was on the rise.
This resulted in the two receiving a lot of vitriol from the media. When Affleck once reflected upon that moment in his life, he couldn’t believe the hate he was getting.
“The amount of venom—I must have touched some specific little place in the consciousness,” Affleck once said in an interview with GQ. “I don’t believe I didn’t deserve any negative judgment for anything, but it was just way out of whack.”
On top of that, some in the media cultivated a certain image of Affleck that the Daredevil star didn’t agree with.
“People decided that I was the frat guy, even though I’ve never been inside a fraternity, or the guy who beat them up at school, even though that wasn’t me at all,” he said.
Ben Affleck once called 2003 the ‘annus horribilis of his life
Reflecting on the year 2003, Affleck discussed how many areas of his life didn’t go the way he would’ve liked them to. Both his professional life and his personal life were under heavy scrutiny.
“In our culture, we get very much into short-handing people,” he explained. “And I got shorthanded as That Guy: Jennifer Lopez, movies bombed, therefore he must be a sort of thoughtless dilettante, solipsistic consumer blah blah blah,” he once said in an interview with Details (via Digital Spy).
The amount of adversity Affleck experienced at the time made 2003 stand out in the actor’s eyes.
“It’s hard to shake those sort of narratives. You were looking at that one-liner on me in 2003, which was definitely the annus horribilis of my life,” he added.
It had gotten to the point where Affleck quipped he was a bit tired of others bringing up 2003 to him in interviews. Especially since that year had other things going on.
“People bring up 2003, and I get it,” he said. “Jennifer Lopez …Gigli, and all this s*** just kind of blew up. But, you know, in 2003, Barack Obama was a state senator in Illinois! OK?”
Ben Affleck ran away from Hollywood because of the attention he’d received from the media
The Batman V. Superman star shared the negative media attention was beginning to take its toll on him. Not just on a professional level, but on an emotional level as well. So much so that the only strategy Affleck had to deal with it all was to simply escape.
“I think I just ran away. You can only handle so much. I moved for a while to this place in Georgia that I have, was able to get away, by and large, from stuff. Come up with a plan for how to do something with my life that doesn’t put me in the crosshairs of this sort of thing,” he said.
