‘I HAVE MADE MISTAKES’
Ben comes clean
Ben Affleck’s last chance
It’s been a long way back for Ben Affleck. After struggling with addiction, a marriage breakdown and a few bumps in the road with his newfound sobriety, the Gone Girl star has finally found his balance, and says that honesty truly is the best policy.
The actor has given two in-depth interviews about his battles with booze, detailing his descent into despair and his biggest regrets, through to what motivates him to remain on the straight and narrow.
“People with compulsive behaviour, and I am one, have this kind of basic discomfort all the time that they’re trying to make go away,” he explains.
“You’re trying to make yourself feel better with eating or drinking or sex or gambling or shopping or whatever. But that ends up making your life worse. Then you do more of it to make that discomfort go away. Then the real pain starts. It becomes a vicious cycle you can’t break. At least that’s what happened to me.”
Ben says he used to be able to drink “normally” for a long time – but when his marriage to actress Jennifer Garner ( 47) started to crumble, he found he was relying on the bottle more than he should have been.
“My drinking, of course, created more marital problems,” he nods. “The biggest regret of my life is this divorce. Shame is really toxic. There is no positive by-product of shame. It’s just stewing in a toxic, hideous feeling of low self-worth and self-loathing.
“I have certainly made mistakes. I’ve certainly done things that I regret. But you’ve got to pick yourself up, learn from it, learn some more and try to move forward. It took me a long time to fundamentally, deeply, without a hint of a doubt, admit to myself that I’m an alcoholic.”
One of his main sources of shame was the fact he knew he was falling into the same dark hole as his father, who also suffered from alcoholism, and didn’t get sober until Ben was 19.
“Seeing my dad – he drank every day and that was just life,” recalls Ben. “As that got worse, that was really, really painful and I always said, ‘That will never be me. I’m never gonna do that.’
“The older I’ve gotten, the more I recognise that my dad did the best he could. There’s a lot of alcoholism and mental illness in my family. The legacy of that is quite powerful and sometimes hard to shake.”
It’s the thought of his children with Jennifer – Violet (14), Seraphina (11) and Samuel (seven) – that motivates Ben to continue on his sober journey. He even took the last six months off work to “parent” and spend quality time with his kids.
“I really don’t want my children to pay for my sins or to be afraid for me, which is one of the hard parts of being a child of an alcoholic,” tells the 47-year-old. “I take some comfort in that I’m doing my very, very best and I hope that that is, you know, has to be good enough. I have to be the man I want to be at this point, I don’t have any more room for failure of that kind.”
Throughout his battles – including a very public relapse last year, when he was snapped stumbling out of a Halloween party looking worse for wear – ex-wife Jennifer has been his rock. At one stage, she was pictured bundling Ben into a car and driving him to rehab.
“Jen is very impressed that Ben is trying hard to be a better man,” a friend of the 13 Going on 30 actress tells. “It really shows to their kids the person he truly is, and that is someone who has made mistakes but is learning from them and not letting things slip into something even more hurtful for himself and his family.
“His honest approach made her feel good. Jen cares very much for Ben and only hopes for the best for him. The fact that he is admitting to his struggles and mentioned his biggest regret was losing her, although it is sad, is also something she really appreciates hearing.
“It’s not going to lead them to getting back together,”adds the friend, “but it’s going to improve their friendship that they’ve been trying to work on while being co-parents.”
And along with a far more harmonious personal life, Ben’s professional career is set to take off once again, with something of a comeback on the cards for 2020. The former Batman has four movies premiering this year, the first of which is The Way Back, where he plays an alcoholic basketball coach.
“The benefits of filming the movie far outweighed the risks,” he tells.