Ben Affleck covers the latest issue of GQ. This is his first major interview in more than a year, and his first interview since his second marriage collapsed and ended in divorce. Ben talks a lot in this piece, about his career, about fame, about the FBI visiting his house and about his ex-wives. The FBI story is weirdly what many outlets have used in their headlines, but the story is boring as sh-t – FBI agents visited all of the houses in Ben’s neighborhood because there was a break-in at a federal official’s home nearby. The feds didn’t even know they stopped by Ben Affleck’s house. There. That’s the story. Obviously, I’m much more interested in what he has to say about Jennifer Lopez and why their marriage suddenly went t-ts up. He talks in circles and tries to say that he respects J.Lo but something happened but there was no soap opera but it’s over. Weird. Some highlights:

The constant attention he gets on a daily basis: “I’m aware that it’s absurd and it’s ridiculous. There’s nothing newsworthy at all about the day-to-day events of my life or the conversation I have with one person or another person that’s photographed… I’m definitely aware of the cosmic joke of it all. What I’ve ended up focusing on is: Look, I know what’s going on in my life. And also, really more importantly, my kids know. We used to have a thing, my ex-wife and I, when they would see something on a supermarket stand, we would say, well, “You know this isn’t always true because if it were, you would have 15 brothers or sisters or whatever the number of stories is where they said that your mom was pregnant.” And I’m really lucky that I have a really good co-parent and partner in Jennifer Garner, the kids’ mom, who’s wonderful and great and we work together well. It’s more of a headache than anything else and there certainly are worse things.

Participating in Jennifer Lopez’s ‘The Greatest Love Story Never Told’: “Part of it was, “Okay, if I’m going to participate in this, I want to try to do it in an honest way and in a way that’s interesting.” Because I thought it was an interesting examination. Like I mentioned to you before, there are a lot of people who I think have handled celebrity more adeptly and more adroitly than I have, Jennifer among them. My temperament is to be a little bit more reserved and private than hers. As happens in relationships, you don’t always have the same attitude towards these things. And so I thought, Oh, this is interesting because how do you reconcile that? Because exactly what you said is true. I love and support this person. I believe in them. They’re great. I want people to see that. And I think the thing that I said in that documentary or the piece that they used was where I said, You don’t marry a ship captain and then say, “Well, I don’t like going out in the water.” You’ve got to own what you knew going into any relationship. And I think it’s important to say that wasn’t the cause of some major fracture. It’s not like you can watch that documentary and go, “Oh, now I understand the issues that these two had.”

Matt Damon loves to act, Ben loves to direct: “As much as I want to be an actor, I find it the most satisfying directing movies. Now, I thought you were going to compare our acting careers, to which I would’ve said, well, Matt learned and knew earlier than I did to really key in on the director as the fundamental basis on which he’s going to make a decision whether to do a movie or not, which was a very wise choice. And also he has certainly had opportunities to do movies that like—it’s not like I was saying, “No, Scorsese, no, Spielberg, I’m not going to be in your movie.” We’re in situations of our opportunities, and we’re subject to that.

Talking about Jennifer Lopez: “Well, on the one hand there’s the first feeling, which is like, well, I hope I was clear about, when you asked me about Jen and the documentary and I talked about that and my sort of personal life a little bit, which I don’t mind doing as long as my actual feelings and intentions and beliefs are communicated, which I hope I was clear that really this is somebody I have a lot of respect for. And I get wanting to divine or explore the kind of differences in perspective that we have in terms of how a person feels comfortable approaching the line between public and private life. But I really hope that whatever you use doesn’t suggest that I have any negativity or judgment or anything regarding that. I have nothing but respect. I guess there’s a tendency to look at breakups and want to identify root causes or something. But honestly, like I said, the truth is much more quotidian than probably people would believe or would be interesting.

His divorce from J.Lo wasn’t a big soap opera: “Yeah, there’s no scandal, no soap opera, no intrigue. The truth is, when you talk to somebody, “Hey, what happened?” Well, there is no: “This is what happened.” It’s just a story about people trying to figure out their lives and relationships in ways that we all sort of normally do. And as you get older, this is true for me, I assume it’s true for most people, there is no “So-and-so did this” or “This was the big event.” It’s really, it sounds more like a couple’s therapy session, which—you would tune out of someone else’s couple’s therapy after a while. For one thing, you start going, “Okay, clearly this person has got these issues. Clearly they have these issues.” And the reason I don’t want to share that is just sort of embarrassing. It feels vulnerable.

[From GQ]

Zach Baron wrote this for GQ and I appreciate that he didn’t press Affleck on any of the personal stuff, and I think Affleck might have been shocked by that lack of “so what happened in your last marriage” questioning. At one point, Affleck just volunteered the stuff about “there’s no scandal, no soap opera.” Anyway, I don’t believe him. I think there was a soap opera and there was a lot of drama behind the scenes. I think J.Lo spent months trying to figure out why Ben just up and decided one day that he no longer wanted to be married to her. But hey, he’s in his 50s now, he can’t blame her for everything (like he did the first time) and complain about her fame (like he did the first time).

Photos courtesy of Cover Images, cover courtesy of GQ.