Becoming a tabloid star gave Ben Affleck his best role ever, writes alisonwillmore
Smoking a cigarette in 2016. Photo: AKIF/BACKGRID This article was featured in One Great Story, New York’s reading recommendation newsletter. Sign up here to get it nightly.
Did Bennifer hurt Affleck’s career? The calculations that go into fame have become so transparent in the 17 years since that relationship that for Affleck to dismiss the media circus as beneath his dignity feels naïve and a little self-serving. But one thing is definitely true: In a year when Affleck appears in three films , more people can name whom he’s dating than what he’s starring in.
It’s not that Affleck is bad at what he does so much as he has seldom had roles that make use of his distinctive set of qualities — the almost absurdly square jaw, the height, the handsomeness, as well as the touch of a smirk, the hint of unreliability that can come across as discordant when he plays the hero. If it feels like Affleck’s greatest role to date has been as himself, the reluctant celebrity, it’s because his pap pics are rich with narrative and unfiltered emotion.
A 2016 photo of the actor smoking a cigarette in London, where he had spent his 44th birthday with Garner and their children, was quickly detached from the time and place in which it was taken to become the stuff of memes. It was a perfect encapsulation of the feeling of stepping out from a rough workplace or a shitty party and letting your game face drop.
The love stories he has starred in have a way of turning out to be other sorts of stories — about a delayed coming-of-age or something weirder. He wooed women under deceptive circumstances in Bounce and Reindeer Games; he learned from the women he dated rather than ending up with them in Chasing Amy and Forces of Nature.
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