Ben Affleck Reveals What He and Jennifer Garner Told Their Kids About Tabloid Stories
Navigating parenthood as celebrities brings with it a unique set of challenges, including tabloid stories. For exes Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner, decades of being tabloid fodder has meant addressing rumors with their three children. What is there to say when a child sees their parents on the cover of a tabloid? Affleck just revealed what he and Garner used to tell their kids when they’d see tabloids at the grocery store.
Affleck and Garner co-parent their three kids together
Although they split in 2015, Affleck and Garner remain close as they co-parent their kids, Violet, 19, Seraphina, 16, and Samuel, 13. That includes celebrating birthdays together as well as holidays and other milestones. (Something that hasn’t reportedly gone over well with Garner’s boyfriend, John Miller.)
Nevertheless, both the 13 Going on 30 and Accountant stars have gushed about each other as parents in the years since their divorce. Affleck, 52, once referred to Garner, also 52, as a “superhero mom,” telling ET in 2016 that he’s “really lucky to have her as a partner to co-parent these kids with. We try our best, we put them first, and that’s what we do.”
Most recently, in a 2025 GQ interview, Affleck once again sang his ex-wife’s praises, calling the Alias alum “wonderful and great,” noting they “work together well.”
As for Garner, she told Vanity Fair in 2016 that she’d “lost the dream of dancing with [her] husband at [her] daughter’s wedding” when she and Affleck divorced. Five years later, though, she said things were different. “When our kids get married, we’ll dance, I know that now,” she told The Hollywood Reporter. “We’ll boogaloo and have a great time. I don’t worry about that anymore.”
They used to tell their kids tabloids aren’t ‘always true’
In the same GQ interview, Affleck shared what he and Garner would do when their children saw tabloid stories about them at the grocery store. “We used to have a thing, my ex-wife and I, when they would see something on a supermarket stand,” the Air director and star said.
“We would say, well, ‘You know this isn’t always true. Because if it were, you would have 15 brothers or sisters. Or whatever the number of stories is where they said that your mom was pregnant.’”
Garner previously shared in 2021 that she’d “request” the kids have a conversation with her and Affleck whenever they came across “shocking” tabloid stories. “My request to them was always, ‘Let Dad and I talk you through whatever it is,’” she told The Hollywood Reporter. “I’d tell them, ‘If you see an image on the front of a magazine, I’ll look at it with you, and we’ll process all the scary feelings that come up together.’”
Affleck has moved away from directing because it means time away from his kids
Asked by GQ why he’s not directing as many movies these days, Affleck explained that it’s “so consuming,” leading to time away from he and Garner’s children.
“The one regret I have about all the movies that I’ve directed is the amount of time it’s taken me away from my kids,” he said. “I love making art. I loved making The Town. But I was away from my kids for long periods of time. There’s little chunks that I missed, and that doesn’t feel good.”
Running Artists Equity, the production company he founded with Matt Damon, means he can spend more time with his son and daughters. “Part of why I love it is because I’m in LA,” Affleck said. “When we’re done at 2:30, I’m going to go, and I’ll be home at 3:45 when my kids get off the bus. And I’m able to construct a life that does that. And that means more to me than any of it. That makes me happier.”
