Ben Affleck Said His Romance With Jennifer Lopez Brought Fame That Was ‘the Worst of Both Worlds’

After reuniting in 2021, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez found themselves as the subject of frequent media attention. This didn’t rival the constant attention they received when they first dated in the early 2000s. Affleck said that while they both had been famous before they started dating, neither could have prepared for the intensity of the attention on them. He shared how it began to feel like the worst of both worlds.

Ben Affleck said his relationship with Jennifer Lopez brought a terrible kind of fame

When Affleck and Lopez began dating, they were at the center of a tabloid frenzy. During this time, Affleck made a series of poorly reviewed movies, including Gigli, the film that introduced him to Lopez. He started to feel as though people cared about his relationship but not his work as an actor.

“I remember feeling like it was the worst of both worlds,” he told Matt Damon in an interview for Entertainment Weekly. “I always viewed it that the tax you paid to get the chance to do this work was to sacrifice your private life, and people were going to have license to make sport of you to some degree.”

He knew this was a possibility, but celebrity journalism was not what it had been when he was younger.

“Jennifer and I happened to be together at a time where the whole industry of celebrity journalism, if you want to call it that, sort of exploded,” he said. “But I thought, ‘S***, this is really not how I had hoped to go, where I’m going to be, what? Famous for being an a**hole or a failure and not able to work?’ I can’t think of a worse outcome.”

Ben Affleck said starring in ‘Gigli’ with Jennifer Lopez started the craze

The public reaction to Gigli was the first time Affleck started to feel this way. People mocked the film but consumed endless amounts of information about the personal lives of the stars. 

“It’s just that [Gigli] became a story in and of itself,” he said. “The funny name, the Jennifer Lopez romance and overexposure of that, it was kind of a perfect storm. And I remember talking to [director Martin Brest] the Friday it came out and I was like it’s just spectacular, it’s a tsunami, it couldn’t be worse. This is as bad as it gets.”

He said he did not like being famous

Affleck said the attention on his relationship was brutal because he hadn’t become an actor to achieve fame. He primarily saw it as a hindrance to his life.

“I’ve never found any virtue in fame at all,” he said, adding, “I’ve probably gotten out of a couple of [traffic] tickets. I’ve gotten reservations at restaurants. But the whole point was to be able to do this job. That was it. Otherwise, what is it worth?”

Ultimately, the constant attention on his relationship led to its breakdown. They canceled their wedding because of the media attention on it and announced their split soon after.

“[Fame is] corrosive,” Affleck said. “It changes the relationships you have with other people.”