Out of sight, out of mind. Jennifer Garner revealed she doesn’t look for Ben Affleck memes online.
“I really work hard not to see either of us in the press,” the Last Thing He Told Me star, 50, told Australian magazine Stellar in an interview published on Saturday, April 8. “It doesn’t make me feel good, even if it’s something nice about one of us.”
Affleck, also 50, and Garner were married in 2005 and share three children: Violet, 17, Seraphina, 14, and Samuel, 11. They split in 2015 and finalized their divorce in 2018.
Though they’re both A-listers, the Alias alum explained that she doesn’t like to think about her and her ex as public figures. “I just try to forget that I’m out there in any way, and the same with anyone I love. I don’t need to see anyone in my family made into a meme,” she explained.
When asked if she’d seen any of the memes about the Argo director — from Sad Ben to the Bored Ben to Running on Dunkin’ Ben — Garner confirmed that she wasn’t familiar. She quipped, “Although I’m sure he’s quite meme-worthy, yes!”
For his part, Affleck recently opened up about how difficult it is to see his words misunderstood publicly.
“I had a really painful experience where I did an interview where I was really vulnerable and the entire pickup was something that was not only not right, it was actually the opposite of what I meant,” the Gone Girl star told The Hollywood Reporter in a cover story last month.
Affleck recalled a December 2021 interview with Howard Stern where he spoke candidly about his struggles with addiction and his divorce from Garner. The Good Will Hunting star explained that there was a misconception “that I was blaming [Jennifer] for my drinking.”
He set the record straight while promoting his film Air, adding: “To be clear, my behavior is my responsibility entirely. The point that I was trying to make was a sad one. Anyone who’s been through divorce makes that calculus of, ‘How much do we try?’”
The Oscar winner continued, “I was trying to say, ‘Hey, look, I was drinking too much, and the less happy you become, whether it’s your job, your marriage, it’s just that as your life becomes more difficult, if you’re doing things to fill a hole that aren’t healthy, you’re going to start doing more of those things.’ I think I was pretty articulate about that,” he said. “It didn’t matter how many times I said, ‘I do not feel this way. I’m telling you, I don’t blame my ex-wife for my alcoholism.’ So, yeah. It’s hard.”
Since their split, Garner has been dating businessman John Miller on and off since 2018. Affleck, meanwhile, rekindled his romance with Jennifer Lopez in 2021. They tied the knot in a Las Vegas ceremony in July 2022.
