Ben Affleck

Oh, um ... Mr Affleck ... there’s something on your back ...

He had claimed it was “fake for a movie,” but Ben Affleck’s massive post-divorce phoenix tattoo sure has staying power. Affleck, 45, was photographed shirtless in Hawaii on March 15 as he trained for Netflix film Triple Frontier, with his back still covered top to bottom in the same full-colour phoenix taking flight.

It was first seen in 2015 as he filmed Live by Night, when he had it done after his split from Jennifer Garner, a source confirmed to WHO. The father-of-three was living in a guesthouse at the family’s Los Angeles property at the time and “They had a huge tattoo machine at the house for days,” said the source. “It took hours and hours to finish.”

Garner was most definitely not a fan. “You know what we would say in my hometown about that? ‘Bless his heart,’ ” she told Vanity Fair in February 2016, eight months after their split. Besides, “A phoenix rising from the ashes? Am I the ashes in this scenario? I take umbrage,” she said. “I refuse to be the ashes.”

The following month, former fiancée Jennifer Lopez was also asked about the inking. “It’s awful! I would tell him, ‘ What are you doing?’ ” she told Andy Cohen on Watch What Happens Live. “His tattoos always have too many colours, they shouldn’t be so colourful. You know what I mean? They should be, like, cooler.”

Maybe Affleck felt dragged: that month he insisted to Extra’s Mario Lopez, “[It’s] fake for a movie. I actually do have a number of tattoos but I try to have them in places where you don’t have to do a lot of cover up. They get sort of addictive, tattoos, after a while.” •

Affleck’s phoenix was first seen in its glory in 2015 (below) and was clearly still there on March 15 in Honolulu (right).

Co-star Charlie Hunnam also went shirtless in prep for their film Triple Frontier.