Speaking to the Hollywood Reporter this week, Jennifer Garner has revealed further details about her 2015 split with ex-husband Ben Affleck. After ten years of marriage and three children, Violet, 15, Seraphina, 12, and Samuel, 9, the couple officially filed for divorce in 2017. But she says it wasn’t the public split that proved most difficult, it was that her children were always watching.
“Going through it in public is not what’s hard, going through it is what’s hard,” Garner told The Hollywood Reporter. “My children’s eyes are on me.”
The press and paparazzi were also relentless during the separation, which saw no boundaries – even during school drop-off.
“We lived down a street that was chock-a-block full of actors, much more successful and famous and decorated than me, including Ben, and they’d all go by one-by-one, no problem, and then I’d go do a school run and it’d be 15 cars going with me,” she says. “I never had a day without them, and if I did, if I made it to a park by hiding in the bottom of the pool man’s truck or something, then a nanny would see me there and call a number and they’d swarm.”
“When they were smaller and there were things out there that were shocking, my request to them was always, ‘Let Dad and I talk you through whatever it is,'” she revealed. “I’d tell them, ‘If you see an image on the front of a magazine, I’ll look at it with you and we’ll process all the scary feelings that come up together.'”
Garner has been a fierce supporter of Affleck during his struggles with alcoholism. In 2018, the 13 Going on 30 actress staged an intervention to get him into a rehab facility.
Affleck split with Ana de Armas in 2020 after less than 12 months together to be closer to his children in Los Angeles.
“Ben is no longer dating Ana,” a source revealed to People. “She broke it off. Their relationship was complicated. Ana doesn’t want to be Los Angeles-based and Ben obviously has to since his kids live in Los Angeles.”
