Ben Affleck cares deeply what people think about him. He doesn’t want to be famous because that comes with criticism, but he wants our admiration and the admiration of his peers. A lot of people are like that, I am too, but not many have Ben’s self destructive streak. That’s the impression I’ve always had of him, and that was confirmed in his recent interview with Scott Feinberg on THR’s Awards Chatter podcast. Ben has two Oscars, Best Picture for Argo and Best Screenwriter for Good Will Hunting, the 1997 film that made him and Matt Damon household names. Ben talks about all that in an over hour long interview which mainly focuses on his career.

I listened to this while I was cooking and baking over the weekend. Ben loves acting and making films and it really shows. He also has the same narrative we’ve heard from him for years, that he was so downtrodden and aggrieved when the press made him into a punchline during the Bennifer years. There’s no mention of the fact that he cheated on Jennifer Lopez and left her at the altar, that he was in her music video and did interviews with her. It’s all about how he was a victim of the tabloids at the time. He has changed his stance on J.Lo though, he finally realized that she was affected too. For years she wasn’t even mentioned when he complained about his tabloid narrative and even Matt Damon was repeating those talking points.

Here are some of the highlights I heard in this interview. He didn’t mention Jennifer Garner, not that he has to, but he was promoting his role in The Way Back. I think he wants an acting nomination for that film. If Garner didn’t ask the director to wait for him when he went into rehab he never would have had that role. He also didn’t mention Ana de Armas at all, but he talked about the paparazzi in the context of Bennifer and said it’s not a pap walk if he’s just leaving his house. Come on, they were doing loved-up pap walks. Here are those excerpts.

On if he and Jennifer Lopez ‘did anything to bring about the hostility and attention’ or if they just happened ‘to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.’
I sort of had to make it in the business twice. I became so not cool and so out of it that I had to totally invent my career. Before I was just starting at the start line. Now I had to start a mile further back. People had a negative [perception of me] fostered by a really reckless and irresponsible tabloid press that would just write things that weren’t true. There’s always a story of the month. Me dating Jennifer Lopez happened to be the tabloid story at the time when that business grew exponentially.

Why in the world would I have wanted it? Why would I have sought that out? People are like ‘oh I see you out there in the paparazzi… pictures.’
‘Yes I left my house and took out the trash.’
‘No you’re taking a pap walk.’ As if [when] you leave your house you’re only doing so in the hope that you could end up the sixth item in the Daily Mail. It’s absurd.

First it was like Dick and Liz. Then there was a ton of resentment against me… and Jennifer.

People were so f-king mean about her — sexist, racist. Ugly, vicious sh-t was written about her in ways that if you wrote it now you would literally be fired for saying those things you said. Now it’s like, she’s lionized and respected for the work she did, where she came from, what she accomplished — as well she fucking should be! I would say you have a better shot, coming from the Bronx, of ending up as like [Justice Sonia] Sotomayor on the Supreme Court than you do of having Jennifer Lopez’s career and being who she is at 50 years old today.

On how someone said something mean about him
I remember this guy Rick McCallum, he was the producer of the middle three Star Wars movies. He did an interview at that time where [somebody brought up] Anakin Skywaker [murdering] Jedi children. He said ‘Ben Affleck, he killed children.’ To be so cavalier to say that about anybody you don’t know. It’s not even an indictment of him, I don’t care about him. It’s just demonstrative [that] once it becomes cool to make fun of somebody then everybody makes fun of them. I remember high school fights… all of a sudden five other guys come over and kick somebody on the ground.

I hate being famous. I don’t mind if I’m not famous. I want to get away from all this, I can’t stand it. I’d be happy to never be on another magazine again. I was actually in the very worst position you can be in in this business which is that you can sell magazines but not movie tickets.

[From The Awards Chatter Podcast]

Ben also talked about sobriety, but he didn’t say how long he’d been sober, just that he had some slips and he wasn’t drinking at work. He seemed to minimize his drinking, which is understandable since he doesn’t want people in his industry to see him as a risk. He wants recognition for The Way Back and he wants people to see his films and to admire him, frankly. He doesn’t want us to notice anything else he does and if we do it’s our fault for paying attention. As for the part about how he was in the worst position he could have been in, we’ve heard this from him for years. He started praising Jennifer Lopez last year after she had success with Hustlers.

photos credit: Backgrid. These are all old photos. The newest one, of Ben getting coffee, is from last month