Ben Affleck Reflects On His Mistakes From Early In His Career

Published on January 3, 2017.

Photo by Stephen Lovekin/REX/Shutterstock

Ben Affleck has had a lot of ups and downs in the entertainment industry and it seems he is once again undergoing some sort of a comeback following a very public split from his wife Jennifer Garner which included a cheating scandal with their former nanny.

Back in his early 20s, as his career was taking off, Affleck was also under a lot of public scrutiny and he recently opened up about his turbulent time in the spotlight in a new interview with The Guardian. “I’d always had a strong idea about my values and the direction I wanted to be headed in, then I ran into getting famous and it totally spun me around and I flailed around for a few years,” he said. “When you’re a young man in your 20s, part of that is making mistakes and learning from them. I just made those in front of everybody rather than privately.”

Affleck also commented on his early movie roles including 1993’s I Killed My Lesbian Wife, Hung Her on a Meat Hook, and Now I Have a Three Picture Deal at Disney, stating, “Yeah, the title is the best thing about it.”

Despite his “mistakes,” the Batman actor added, “I’ve been lucky. I’ve had my wildest dreams come true, but the price is the Faustian exchange you make where your identity is not your own. You become a public figure and it changes all the rules. The press can become invasive and dishonest, and you have to put up with inconvenient stuff like that. I’m at peace with paying my own price, what I’m not at peace with is when it invades on my kids’ space and time. They didn’t make any bargains. I try to shelter them as best I can. That’s my only real gripe.”