How Ben Affleck’s ‘The Accountant’ Made Him Reflect on Being a Father
Ben Affleck has become a hero dad to the three children that he shares with Jennifer Garner. But being a father was possibly the most challenging role he’s ever had to do. And if he wasn’t concerned about parenting enough, his 2016 feature The Accountant reminded him how important he was in his kids’ growth.
Ben Affleck saw a heartbreaking form of fatherhood while playing ‘The Accountant’
Affleck played a different kind of action hero in The Accountant and its sequel The Accountant 2. The thriller saw him playing Christian Wolf, a numbers savant who worked as an accountant for a criminal organization. In the film, Affleck’s character is raised by a stern and strict father whose parenting methods can be brutal. But seeing how the father treated Christian and his brother forced Affleck to think about his experiences as a dad.
“That was definitely moving to me. As a parent, I face dilemmas, like we all do every day, about what’s the right way to raise children. And every time, in every little moment, there comes a crossroad and there’s a lot of different parenting choices that you could make,” Affleck once told Collider. “We all make mistakes, for sure, but we try our best. A lot of it is just that when you have kids, your heart is outside of your body and you feel so vulnerable. The fear of your child being vulnerable is very, very powerful, and I can see how that makes for a really interesting character with the father.”
It’s not the first time Affleck spoke so openly about his growing responsibilities as a parent. Speaking with People, the Gone Girl star explained how being a good father was a constant learning process.
“It’s trial and error,” he said. “You have to be able to forgive yourself as parents and say I’m not always going to do this perfectly. I’m going to do my best. I’m going to try my hardest. Sometimes I’m going to say and do the wrong thing but, like I said, kids are okay with that. If you’re honest and love them.”
“It’s important not to obsess and get into a bunch of negative thinking around relapses and setbacks because that isn’t helpful. What’s helpful is to stay positive and focus on the fact that I’m just the guy who’s doing good today,” Affleck added.
How Ben Affleck changed his career to accommodate his family
Affleck changed his working schedule around to spend more time with his family. In his younger years, the Good Will Hunting star admitted that he felt a constant need to work in order to maintain his career. But as he’s gotten older, the worry of his career fizzling away was overshadowed by the fear of not spending enough time with his kids.
His production company, Artists Equity, helped him achieve a nice balance between his professional and family lives. He founded the company with his friend Matt Damon in November, 2022. Their organization allows Affleck to work on a normal 9 to 5 schedule that allows him even more family time.
“The reason that I first did this was because I recognized that the most important thing to me was both being a parent and being present, and that for my own sake, going off to Austin or Louisiana or somewhere to do some movie, I was really missing time I could never get back. My kids were 8, 11, and 14, and I felt like: I don’t want to miss any of this time at all. And so I thought, well, Let me figure out a way to work at home and have the kind of job where I can actually be here and build my schedule around that,” he told GQ.
