The life of Ben Affleck (Berkeley, California, 51 years old) in the last two decades is a loop: he is in a relationship with a woman named Jennifer, one of his films fails, an image of him having a bad time becomes a meme , wins a non-acting Academy Award and someone compares his career to that of his friend Matt Damon and loses. None of those things have happened just once and nothing rules out their happening again (because out there, still waiting, are Jennifer Lawrence, Jennifer Love-Hewitt and Jennifer Connelly).
His career already spans four decades, however everything in it seems to have passed too quickly. In 1998 he was named the new Tom Cruise thanks to Armageddon and four years later Los Angeles Times I asked him to take a break. His career has suffered a gradual deterioration, but not his popularity. We have heard much less about Hypnoticthe thriller that has just been released under the direction of Robert Rodríguez, who the alleged discussion which he kept with his wife Jennifer Lopez in a car.
Ben Affleck’s has been an atypical story from the beginning. He could be considered a child prodigy, since we have seen him on screen since he was seven years old, but except for the most die-hard fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer no one remembers him before Move of ’76 (1993), Richard Linklater’s generational comedy in which he played a high school bully, a role similar to the one he next played in Mallrats (1995), by Kevin Smith.
He came to think that he would be pigeonholed into the role of bully until Smith gave him his first leading role in the romantic comedy indie Chasing Amy (1997), where Affleck began a relationship with a lesbian woman. His character was sensitive, tender, ironic and, most importantly, handsome even with a goatee. Hollywood, always anxious about the discovery of a new beau, prepared to engulf him. Before Chasing Amy premiered, he was already sitting in the director’s office. Armageddon, Michael Bay, listening to the route he had to follow to become an action hero.
Such as recognized producer Jennifer Klein, told him: “You’re going to have to go to the gym, get a tan and get a haircut.” Jerry Bruckheimer didn’t like his teeth: “He has baby teeth. “I fixed Tom Cruise’s teeth and I’m going to fix them too.” Every now and then the industry sets its sights on a comedy actor and processes him into a mass of muscles. Sometimes it turns out well (Chris Pratt), sometimes it’s weird (John Krasinski), and sometimes it’s something you’d rather never see (Kumail Nanjiani). Affleck stood up to Bruce Willis with dignity, and his chemistry with Liv Tyler, and especially the I don’t wanna miss a thing by Aerosmith made us forget the embarrassing cookie sequence that made us wish that that asteroid the size of Texas would land as soon as possible.
The important thing is that it raised more than 500 million dollars and everyone noticed how handsome Affleck looked in a shirt. He was born a star and besides he was intelligent. He and his childhood friend Matt Damon had sold a script they had been working on for years for $600,000: The unstoppable Will Hunting, that with nine candidates was the second most nominated film by the Academy in 1997 behind Titanic.
Affleck went from not being able to pay rent to earning $12 million per movie. He was dating Gwyneth Paltrow and People He was chosen as the sexiest man of 2002. The world was at his feet. How do you explain that just a couple of years later Los Angeles Times wrote an article in which he talked about his “fall”? The answer is a word that combines two names: Bennifer.
The case Bennifer
After the breakup with Paltrow he began dating the actress, singer, dancer, businesswoman and full-time diva Jennifer Lopez and, in the style of great couples (Burton and Taylor, Hepburn and Tracy, Bacall and Bogart), they embarked on a film project. Affleck, who had already demonstrated his power delesbianizer in Chasing Amy, He repeated it again in A dangerous relationship (Gigli), the story of a small-time criminal who falls in love with a lesbian hitwoman, who, as often happened with fictional homosexuals until relatively recently, ended up following the straight path and becoming heterosexual.
The film had an almost negligible box office and disastrous reviews. “Once the emotion wears off schadenfreudiana “From seeing beautiful people humiliate themselves, the same thing happens with our desire to live,” wrote Jeff Giles in Newsweek. Would the same thing have happened if the female lead had been the planned Halle Berry? Is it such a disastrous movie? The truth is that it is not worse than most of Jennifer Lopez’s movies. Her failure had more to do with the fatigue that the public was beginning to feel. People didn’t like the couple, much less their ubiquity. And social networks did not exist, but the tabloids turned them into their menu of the day. “And who fed them?” asked an anonymous executive. in Los Angeles Times. “I don’t blame the tabloids because if you buy your girlfriend a six-carat diamond ring and go to premieres in a white Bentley like John Travolta in Saturday night Fever, You’re giving them what they want.”
“That kind of coverage robs movie stars of their mystique,” lamented Harvey Weinstein, then a great friend of Affleck. “The great lesson that Paul Newman and Robert Redford taught me is that you have to go out, promote your film and then run and hide.” In a blushing move that, handled well, could have been ironic and given a layer of whiteness to a relationship that was beginning to turn out to be stomach-churning, they captured their story in the video clip. Jenny from the Blocksomething that the actor would regret years later.
If Affleck’s physical attractiveness had made him the most promising of the couple of friends who were going to dominate Hollywood, the betting houses soon moved their chips to Damon, who triumphed as the dark and fascinating protagonist of The talent of Mr Ripley (1999) and as the heroic Jason Bourne. Nothing was working for Affleck. Pearl Harbor (2000) was born to be a Titanic of the air, but despite its good collection it did not warm the hearts of the spectators. Nor did he arouse enthusiasm like the new Jack Ryan in nuclear panic (2002), after Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford. Affleck and Lopez got engaged, but the wedding was postponed due to “excessive media attention,” which, using a PR/Spanish translator, means that the singer was not very happy about Affleck’s visit to a club. of striptease.
Another Jennifer
But Hollywood always gives a handsome man a second (or twelfth) chance. His role as George Reeves, the first Superman, in Hollywoodland (2006) won him the Volpi Cup in Venice. He opted for smaller projects and got behind the cameras to show that his award as a screenwriter had not been a coincidence. Goodbye, little one, goodbye (2007) and The Town (2010) earned him the respect of studies and Argo (2012) confirmed him as a director: he won three Oscars out of nine nominations, although none were nominally for him.
His new life included a new partner, Jennifer Garner, with whom he had worked on Pearl Harbor. In 2005 they were married by Victor Garber, Garner’s father in Alias. The new ones Bennifer They did not have media exposure at the level of the first, but they did have a eventful ending: after a decade and three children together, they separated in 2015. If the first time the reason was a club striptease, now it was time for another cliché: the babysitter. The divorce coincided with the filming of Batman and Superman: Dawn of Justice. The choice of him as Batman had not been well received by fans, who started a petition on Change.org to abandon the project signed by 100,000 disgruntled fans.
“I wore the suit to my son’s birthday party, it was worth every moment of suffering in The Justice League”, declared years later. And what was that “suffering”? “I started drinking too much around that time, and it’s a hard thing to confront, deal with, and deal with,” she explained. “I’ve been sober for a while, and I feel healthier than ever.”
Before Howard Stern admitted that the problems in his marriage had influenced his descent into hell. “I couldn’t leave because of my children, but I wasn’t happy, what do I do? What I did was drink a bottle of whiskey and fall asleep on the couch, which turned out not to be the solution.”
It wasn’t the first time it happened to him. In 2001 she had entered the Promises rehabilitation center in Malibu to receive treatment for alcoholism. Affleck has never hidden his problems with depression and addictions. A reality that he knew very well. His father is an alcoholic and remembers seeing him drink every day and feeling “relieved” when his parents divorced when he was 11.
Affleck is sad
While Affleck was dealing with his demons and the not-too-enthusiastic reception of his Batman, the world, or rather the world that has an Internet connection and a lot of free time, was shocked by the meme sad Affleck. During a promotional interview for the film alongside Henry Cavill, she had maintained an absent expression for a few seconds and the networks did not need more. A youtuber he put the The sounds of silence soundtrack and the video went viral.
He was not the first actor reduced to a meme, or even a symbol of sadness: it had already happened with Keanu Reeves, but, if in Reeves’ case there was a certain tenderness, in Affleck’s there was always a trace of ridicule. In her highly scrutinized relationship with Ana de Armas, some saw a publicity move, although it could also be pure chance that every time a foreign actress arrives in Hollywood she falls in love with her filming partner and crosses paths daily with everyone. paparazzi He is registered in California.
On some occasion the actor used the madness of the networks for his own benefit. His appearance in Loss (2014), by David Fincher, was scrutinized not for his acting skills but for his penis, which appeared in close-up so briefly that Vulture created a guide to detect it on the screen that included the suggestion to use binoculars. Demonstrating that he is up to speed, Affleck himself increased interest in the event by declaring to MTV that indeed the penis, although brief, was there. “It’s an IMAX penis! You have to pay fifteen dollars to see it in 3D… It’s better in 3D.”
A script twist worthy of Loss was the one that brought us in 2021 to Bennifer original: Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez reconciled and married 17 years after their breakup and it once again became the favorite topic of the tabloids and a cornucopia of new memes. He Sad Affleck was overshadowed by Exhausted Affleck for López’s alleged fiery nature. If social media is anything to go by, Ben Affleck still matters; If we go by the box office results, it seems that his films are not so much. In 2023 it is easier to remember his latest meme than the title of his latest release. Is Hypnotic. You are welcome.
You can follow ICON on Facebook, x, instagramor subscribe here to the Newsletter.
#curious #case #Ben #Affleck #star #managed #popular #movies