Ben Affleck Just Revealed Why He Almost Cast Jennifer Garner in His New Movie, and What He Said About Jennifer Lopez Speaks Volumes

Ben Affleck has played a lot of complicated men on screen, but in a new interview with Variety, the version he presented of himself off screen was disarmingly simple: a 54 year old father who picks up his kids from school and builds his entire career around not missing their childhood.

The wide ranging conversation, published October 7, 2026 to promote his Netflix crime thriller Animals, touched on two of the most famous relationships of his life: his ex wife Jennifer Garner, with whom he shares three children, and his other ex wife Jennifer Lopez, whose divorce from him was finalized in 2024. And it is Affleck’s honesty about both women that has people talking.

“I Have Nothing Salacious”

Asked about his life these days, Affleck kept it plain. “I have nothing salacious or all that interesting in my life,” he said, before describing the routine that clearly matters most to him. “I work hard, and then I go home and pick up the kids from school. We have dinner if they agree to hang out with me. They’re with me for a week, then with their mom for a week.”

The three kids are Violet, 20, Seraphina, 17, and Samuel, 14. Affleck and Garner married in 2005, separated in 2015 and finalized their divorce in 2018. More than a decade after the split, the coparenting arrangement they built is, by his telling, one of the best things in his life.

“They have a great thing with their mom, for whom I’m also really, really grateful,” Affleck said. “I know things will come up that are hard, and I don’t want to jinx that, but this time in my life as a human being is really wonderful.”

It is a rare note of contentment from a man whose personal life has been tabloid fodder for decades. And it is clearly deliberate. Affleck said he now chooses his work based on how close it keeps him to his kids in Los Angeles.

“I’m divorced, I have shared custody, and I don’t want to miss these years,” he said. “My kids are here in L.A., and their life is flying by. I don’t want to have to be in Shreveport or New Mexico in order to work.”

He acknowledged the privilege behind that choice. “I know some people don’t have the luxury of making those choices. I’m certainly fortunate, but I know from experience that the best crews in the world are in L.A.”

The Movie That Almost Reunited Him With Garner

Here is the detail that stopped readers in their tracks. Affleck revealed that he once considered casting Garner as his onscreen wife in Animals. The role ultimately went to Kerry Washington, but at one point, the ex spouses were close to working together again.

According to Affleck, he explained to Garner that he still wants to find a project for the two of them. The idea of casting her had a practical appeal too. “It also has the added benefit of, like, both of us will see our kids more because we do a week and a week and back and forth,” he told Entertainment Weekly in a follow up interview. “I thought, well, we can coordinate our schedules around it.”

So why did it not happen? Affleck’s answer was pure filmmaker. “In a movie, the illusion has to be the thing,” he told Variety. Translation: casting two real life exes as a fictional married couple would have turned the movie into a meta spectacle, and the story deserved better than that.

Garner apparently agreed. Reports from the fallout say she decided against the part on similar grounds, feeling their real history might pull focus from the film. It is a refreshingly adult resolution from two people who clearly still respect each other.

The road to Animals was winding. Affleck’s longtime friend Matt Damon was initially attached to lead the project, but the plans were reconsidered after Affleck learned Spike Lee was developing a similarly themed film, Highest 2 Lowest. When Animals eventually moved forward, Damon was unavailable, so Affleck stepped into the lead himself alongside Washington and Gillian Anderson. The film follows a political candidate facing a devastating family crisis after his son is kidnapped. It arrived on Netflix and in select theaters on October 9, 2026.

His Words About Jennifer Lopez

Affleck was equally generous when the conversation turned to his other ex wife. In the Variety interview, he expressed what was described as an enormous amount of respect for Jennifer Lopez’s acting abilities and questioned whether major entertainment awards always recognize the most deserving performances.

The two had been married from 2022 until their divorce in 2024. Yet their professional relationship outlasted the marriage. Affleck served as a producer on Kiss of the Spider Woman, the musical film starring Lopez, and his production company Artists Equity helped bring the project to the screen. Lopez has since publicly acknowledged the company’s contribution.

It is a notable contrast with the gossip cycle that surrounded the split. Where tabloids looked for villains, Affleck has consistently declined to supply one. He has previously said he loved and supported Lopez and rejected the suggestion that their differing approaches to fame explained the end of the marriage.

In a separate interview with USA TODAY published October 8, Affleck expanded on his philosophy about art and private life. He pushed back on the tendency of audiences to project an actor’s personal baggage onto their performances, calling divorce with children “excruciatingly painful” but arguing that literal parallels do not make better acting. “You’ve got to have lived life to be able to relive it authentically,” he said.

A Man in a New Season

The interview comes after a brutal year for Affleck personally. He lost both of his parents just two months apart: his father Timothy died at the beginning of April 2026, and his mother Chris died on June 2 at 83. He spoke about the losses in a GQ interview earlier this month, saying the grief taught him that “we only get so much time.” Read his full reflection on losing his parents here.

That awareness seems to be the thread connecting everything Affleck said to Variety. The school pickups. The week on, week off schedule. The refusal to shoot in far flung locations while his kids are growing up. The respect for both ex wives. It all points to a man who has stopped chasing the Hollywood chaos and started protecting the ordinary afternoons.

“I know things will come up that are hard, and I don’t want to jinx that,” he said. “But this time in my life as a human being is really wonderful.”

For someone who has lived so much of his life in public, it might be the most surprising thing Ben Affleck has ever said.

Sources: Entertainment Weekly, Parade

Further reading: Tobey Maguire officiated his ex wife Jennifer Meyer’s Hawaii wedding | John Boyega shared the first glimpse of his baby boy