Photo: Frazer Harrison/Getty
Ben Affleckhas been in the public eye for nearly 25 years, but the Oscar winner says that, no matter how much chatter surrounds him, his children’s opinions of him matter first and foremost.
“The only biography that needs anything is written on the hearts of your kids,” Affleck toldGood Morning Americaof 16-year-old Violet, 12-year-old Seraphina and 9-year-old Samuel, whom he co-parents withJennifer Garner.
He continued, “I will be long dead and someone will ask my kids what was your dad like and that is when I will know what my life was worth.”
Affleck, 49, has been candid about many struggles, including alcoholism, during his decades in the spotlight. Just this week he found himself in the hot seat for saying on theHoward Stern Showthat his faltering marriage to Garner, 49, was “part of why I started drinking … because I was trapped.”
He explained, “I was like ‘I can’t leave ‘cause of my kids, but I’m not happy, what do I do?’ What I did was drink a bottle of scotch and fall asleep on the couch, which turned out not to be the solution.”
Ben Affleck, Jennifer Garner.Magnus Sundholm/Shutterstock; Jon Kopaloff/Getty Images
Affleck told Kimmel that he was trying in his conversation with Stern to articulate “how much we respect each other and cared about each other and cared about our kids and put them first.” Instead, he says he came off in the media as “the worst, most insensitive, stupid awful guy.”
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Affleck revisited the idea of second chances — a topic he’s been reflecting on for years, and especially this week — withGMA.
“I feel like at the end of the day everybody needs second chances. I don’t know anybody who does everything right. We all fail. That’s the truth,” he said, adding, “There aren’t enough movies, there isn’t enough success, not enough likes on Instagram. Those things will never fill you up or make you happy.”
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What does fill him up, he said, is family: “My life is better and I am happier the more I am around my kids.”
He toldGMA, “We all want to pass on the best of ourselves to our children. I don’t care who you are, I’m quite sure you feel at some point in your life you’ve taken missteps, nobody wants to transfer that to our children and that is a real task that everybody faces, whatever those issues are.”
Earlier this month, he also spoke toWSJ. Magazineaboutgrowing from past mistakes.
“There’s a lot that I would want my younger self to understand. Some things, honestly, that I’m too self-conscious of or shy about to be really candid about with the whole world because they’re mostly mistakes,” he said. “Things I wish I had done differently, and they’re rooted in that instinct to look at my past and think, I wish I could have avoided this painful event.’ I wish I could have not caused someone else pain. I wish I had understood better the nature of what was difficult about life for me.”
He acknowledged, “I wish I did not have to learn some lessons the hard way.”
source: people.com
