14 DAY TRIAL // Back in 2003 and 2004, when Ben Affleck was still dating Jennifer Lopez, not a day went by without either giving an interview to talk about their romance, or deny some tabloid report. However, Ben insists he never courted the attention, and even says a serial killer got a better treatment in the press than he did.
To promote his latest film, “Argo,” which has already won over critics, Affleck sat down for an interview with GQ magazine, which is now featured in the Men of the Year issue.
Comparing his life now to the way it used to be, Affleck is definitely happier today. Still, he can’t but feel as if the press wronged him terribly by treating him worse than they did murdered Scott Peterson.
“What was that guy’s name who killed his wife and dumped her off the side of a boat? Peterson. I remember thinking he actually gets slightly better treatment than I do in the press. At least they had to say ‘alleged killer’,” Affleck shares for the publication.
“Unfortunately there’s an aspect of that that’s like one of those fights you see on YouTube where one of them falls down and then a bunch of people who were standing around come over and kick the person. They don’t know them, they have no involvement in the fight, but they recognize a moment that they can get a free shot in, and for some people it’s just too much to resist,” he goes on to say.
Useless to stress, he was the guy done and the press was the bystanders who rush to get a kick in before they run off.
To this day, Affleck says, he’s amazed at the kind of vitriol coming his way from people he did not know and who, most importantly, had no idea who he really was.
He reckons his life must have struck a chord with them to make them so hateful, but he stops short of saying jealousy was probably the reason they all attacked him the way they did.
If he ever did anything wrong to deserve to be vilified, the star argues, that was not knowing how to be more temperate, how to act as to not send the wrong message.
“The most pernicious illusion, myth, was that this is something that this guy wants, ‘He’s wanting this much coverage.’ That’s the most unappealing thing that you can say about somebody. And I knew how disastrous it was. It was the last thing I wanted, and I could tell it was damaging me, and I tried to get away from it,” Ben explains.
Eventually, after he broke up with Jennifer Lopez, Ben met Jennifer Garner, his current wife and the mother of his three kids. He didn’t know what happiness was until he met her, he says.
The full GQ interview is here.