Ben Affleck has clarified recent comments he made about his marriage to Jennifer Garner.
Earlier this week, the actor came under fire after his appearance on The Howard Stern Show, where he admitted to the host that he would probably still be drinking if he hadn’t separated from his ex-wife.
The 49-year-old, who has gone to rehab for alcohol addiction in the past, claimed he started drinking heavily because he felt “trapped” in their ten-year marriage.
The Hollywood stars, who tied the knot in 2005 and separated in 2015, share three kids together – Violet, 16, Seraphina, 12, and Samuel, 9.
Ben, who is now dating Jennifer Lopez, said he’d “probably still be drinking” if he stayed with his ex-wife, and admitted: “It’s part of why I started drinking… because I was trapped.”
“I was like ‘I can’t leave ’cause of my kids, but I’m not happy, what do I do?’ What I did was drink a bottle of scotch and fall asleep on the couch, which turned out not to be the solution.”
Ben’s comments ruffled a lot of feathers, as many have slammed the actor for blaming his alcoholism on his marriage to Jennifer.
During an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Wednesday night, Ben spoke about his controversial comments, telling the host: “I would never want my kids to think I would ever say a bad word about their mom.”
The actor said his interview with Howard Stern as “really cool, like long-form, in-depth”, and admitted he did not expect the backlash.
“We talked a lot about my family, you know, alcoholism, struggling with real things, how you have to be accountable and loving, how I work with my ex-wife, how I’m so proud of the way we work together for our kids, the best that we can for them,” he explained.
“I was thrilled. I thought, ‘Wow, I should do more honest, exploratory, self-evaluating things.’ Then I start seeing all this stuff come up on Twitter. And I was like, what is this?”
“I saw one of these websites had done the click bait thing – ‘You won’t believe what he said, click on this, come to our site.’ I looked on it, and they had literally taken the conversation that I had had for two hours and made it seem as if I was saying the exact opposite of what I had said.”
“I had gone on, said how much we respected each other, cared about each other, cared about our kids, put them first. It said that I had blamed my ex-wife for my alcoholism, that I was trapped in this marriage, just made me out to be the worst, most insensitive, stupid, awful guy. It hurts my feelings,” Ben added.
