Ben Affleck Clarifies Whether He Really Blames Jennifer Garner for Drinking

Ben Affleck clarifies the messages he blamed his ex-wifeJennifer Garner for his drinking, talking about previous remarks he made years ago in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter.

The Flash actor spoke to Hollywood Reporter for a profile on Thursday. He mentioned that he became “very cautious” in his dealings with the press after what he described as a misinterpretation of comments he made in an interview with Howard Stern in December 2021.

The “Good Will Hunting” actor told a radio host at the time that he “probably still drinking” if he was still married to Garner, which immediately made headlines.

But Affleck told the publication that “everything [press] the pickup was something not only wrong, but also the opposite of what I had in mind” in an interview with Stern.

“To be clear, I take full responsibility for my behavior,” he told The Hollywood Reporter, explaining, “What I was trying to do was sad.”

He continued: “I was trying to say, ‘Hey, look, I’ve been drinking too much, and the less happy you get, whether it’s your job, your marriage, just as your life gets harder, if you’re doing something then to fill a hole that is not healthy, you will start doing more of these things.”

“I think I made it pretty clear,” he said, referring to publications “who purposely misrepresented it to make it clickbait and everyone else picked it up.”

“It doesn’t matter how many times I’ve said, ‘I don’t feel that way. I’m telling you, I don’t blame my ex-wife for my alcoholism,” he said. “So yes. It’s difficult.”

During Affleck’s appearance on Stern, the actor said that his marriage to Garner was “one of the reasons I started drinking alcohol because I was trapped.”

He told the radio host, “I thought, ‘I can’t leave because of my kids, but I’m not happy, what should I do?’ What I did was drink a bottle of whiskey and fall asleep on the couch, which turned out to be no solution.”

He added: “We had a failed marriage – it happens – with someone I love and respect, but who I should no longer be married to. After all, we tried, we tried, we tried because we had kids. We both felt we didn’t want this to be the model of marriage that our children see.”

Affleck is currently married to Jennifer Lopez. The couple tied the knot twice last year: the first time intimate ceremony in Las Vegas in July, then much larger celebration in Georgia in front of your friends and family.