Ben Affleck revealed how his divorce from Jennifer Garner led him to improve his acting skills.
The actor, who starred in the film “The Way Back” in 2020, discussed his active career and how he reconsidered his approach to the art form in recent years during a roundtable discussion for The Hollywood Reporter starring co-stars Sacha Baron Cohen, Delroy Lindo included. , Gary Oldman, John David Washington and Steven Yeun.
In describing his role as an alcoholic-former high school basketball player who reluctantly agrees to coach his old Catholic school, Affleck explained that he gained more life experience, which helped him tackle more complex roles as he gets older.
“The film was much more about the fact that, the moment I lived enough years, saw enough ups and downs, had kids and divorced, I was at a point in my life where I had enough life experience. to a role to make it really interesting to me, ‘he explained. “I’m not good enough to just think it out of the whole cloth, you know? I do not have to do research on the alcoholism aspect of the film – it’s covered. That was the Daniel Day-Lewis approach to it! “
BEN AFFLECK BEAT ALCOHOLISM IN NEW MOVIE, ‘THE WAY BACK’
The actor and former “Alias” star officially divorced in 2018 after a long separation. They were officially married in 2005.
Jennifer Garner started about what it was like to start a family with Ben Affleck in WSJ. Magazine’s issue for women’s style in March.
(Getty Images)
In a previous interview with The New York Times, Affleck described the split with Garner as the biggest “regret” in his life and noted that his addiction played a big role in the rift between them.
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“People with compulsive behavior, and I’m one, have this basic discomfort all the time trying to make them disappear,” Affleck said last year. “You try to make yourself feel better with eating or drinking, having sex, gambling or shopping or whatever. But it ultimately makes your life worse. Then you do more of it to make the discomfort go away. Then the real pain begins. It becomes a vicious circle that you can not break. ‘
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Fortunately, he and Garner remain friendly and continue their three children, Violet (15), Seraphina Rose Elizabeth (12) and Samuel (8) together.
Elsewhere in his interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the actor explained how his alcoholism, including his recent relapse, actually helped him portray his character in ‘The Way Back’.
Ben Affleck described how his real alcoholism helped him play his role in ‘The Way Back’.
(Paras Griffin / Getty Images for Warner Bros.)
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“I’m an alcoholic recovering and I played an alcoholic in the movie. It’s really about grief and losing a child, which I, thank God, did not experience, and is probably the worst thing that you can experience. But also, a lot of it is about alcoholism, “he said.” Alcoholism in itself and compulsive behavior is not inherently super interesting, but what is sometimes interesting is what you discover in the course of recovering yourself and try to find out what went wrong, how to fix it, what you want your life to look like and what ethics you want to live in. So yes, I’m an alcoholic. Yes, I had a relapse. Yes “I recovered. And then I went to do the movie.”