Ben Affleck Clarifies Whether He Really Blames Jennifer Garner For His Drinking

Ben Affleck is clarifying reviews that he blamed his ex-wife, Jennifer Garner, for his consuming, opening up about earlier remarks he’d made years in the past in a brand new interview with The Hollywood Reporter.

“The Flash” actor spoke to The Hollywood Reporter for a profile on Thursday. He talked about that he’s turn out to be “very guarded” in doing press, following what he characterised as a misinterpretation of feedback he made in an interview with Howard Stern in December 2021.

The “Good Will Hunting” actor instructed the radio host on the time that he’d “probably still be drinking” if he was nonetheless married to Garner, which instantly made headlines.

But Affleck instructed the outlet that “the entire [press] pickup was something that was not only not right, it was actually the opposite of what I meant” within the interview with Stern.

“To be clear, my behavior is my responsibility entirely,” he instructed The Hollywood Reporter, explaining, “The point that I was trying to make was a sad one.”

He continued, “I was trying to say, ‘Hey, look, I was drinking too much, and the less happy you become, whether it’s your job, your marriage, it’s just that as your life becomes more difficult, if you’re doing things to fill a hole that aren’t healthy, you’re going to start doing more of those things.’”

“I think I was pretty articulate about that,” he mentioned, calling out publications “who deliberately mischaracterized it in order to make it clickbait, and everyone else then picked it up.”

“It didn’t matter how many times I said, ‘I do not feel this way. I’m telling you, I don’t blame my ex-wife for my alcoholism,’” he mentioned. “So, yeah. It’s hard.”

During Affleck’s look on Stern, the actor mentioned his marriage to Garner was “part of why I started drinking alcohol was because I was trapped.”

He instructed the radio host: “I was like, ‘I can’t leave ‘cause of my kids, but I’m not happy, what do I do?’ What I did was drank a bottle of scotch and fell asleep on the couch, which turned out not to be the solution.”

He added, “We had a marriage that didn’t work ― this happens ― with somebody that I love and respect but to whom I shouldn’t be married any longer. Ultimately, we tried, we tried, we tried because we had kids. Both of us felt like we don’t want this to be the model that our kids see of marriage.”

Affleck is, after all, now married to Jennifer Lopez. The couple tied the knot twice final yr: The first being an intimate ceremony in Las Vegas in July, adopted by a a lot bigger celebration in Georgia in entrance of their family and friends.