Was it love at first sight or doomed from the start? Maybe Ben Affleck and Jennifer
Garner’s former nanny holds the key to this once-super couple’s demise.
Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner first met in 2001 while filming "Pearl Harbor," but
it wasn't until 2003's Marvel flop "Daredevil" that they fell in love.
"Remember me?"
In 2017, Affleck admitted to Playboy that the romance helped him to appreciate that
there may be bright sides to failure, saying:
"We fell in love on 'Daredevil.' [...] The Rotten Tomatoes rating is not in
direct proportion to how important a life experience a movie was."
While both films hardly set Hollywood alight, sparks flew for the two actors off-screen.
Of course, Affleck and Garner were romantically involved with other people at the time. Affleck
was famously engaged to Jennifer Lopez in one of the most highly-profiled relationships in
Hollywood history. The two first met while filming the romantic comedy "Gigli" in 2001,
and dated amidst such a rabid tabloid frenzy that they subsequently called
off their wedding. In January 2004, "Bennifer" called it quits altogether.
As for Garner, she was married to actor Scott Foley when she and Affleck starred
opposite each other in "Daredevil." The couple met in 1998 while filming "Felicity," and they
were married just two years later. After four years of marriage, the two parted ways. Foley,
however, has insisted there was no foul play, telling TV Guide at the time:
"There was no other relationship,
there was no infidelity, nothing. People get divorced, you know?"
Affleck and Garner went public with their romance in 2004,
snuggling up together at the World Series.
They kept their relationship mostly under wraps for months amidst the prying paparazzi,
and eloped the following year in a low-key four-person ceremony. Affleck
credits his then-wife for getting him through a dark period in his
career after he felt he wasn't being taken seriously as an artist. He told Playboy:
"Getting to know her, falling in love with her, and being connected with her gave me a
foundation to reach out and say, Okay, I'm going to do 'Hollywoodland,' I'm going to direct 'Gone
Baby Gone.' [...] She is by leaps and bounds the most important person to me in that respect."
"I couldn't do any of the things I do without your support."
"You're my angel, my life, and my world."
"You're reading that."
The pressure of the spotlight Throughout their marriage, Jennifer Garner and Ben
Affleck were vocal about the tremendous toll the paparazzi had on their family.
"If, you know, if there is any inkling of trouble,
or if the tabloids decide there's trouble, it can create trouble."
On an episode of "Tell Me More With Kelly Corrigan,"
Garner was candid about the intense scrutiny placed upon them, saying:
"For 10 years, there were at the very least six cars and often 20 outside of our house,
and outside of school, and at the pediatrician's."
"And you're begging them, 'Please step aside from the pediatrician's door."
"I have a sick kid. Please.'"
Affleck has also been vocal about the paparazzi. He told Playboy:
"It's a safety thing, and there's also a sanity thing. My kids aren't
celebrities. They never made that bargain."
The negative interactions with paparazzi became such an issue for the family that in 2013,
Garner chose to testify before the California State Assembly
Committee on Public Safety alongside Halle Berry for Senate Bill 606,
which ultimately passed. The law protects the safety of celebrities' children by
increasing penalties for harassment from a maximum of six months in jail to one year.
In 2015, Ben Affleck was accused of striking up an affair with his children's nanny. Christine
Ouzounian was 27 when she started working for the family, with sources claiming to
People that the former nanny had fallen in love with Affleck. She allegedly caught his
wandering eye and the pair struck up an affair not long after she was hired. In June of 2015,
Ouzounian joined Affleck and his kids in the Bahamas on vacation. When Jennifer Garner,
who was said to be estranged from her husband at the time, showed up to join them,
Affleck reportedly went to Las Vegas with Ouzounian for a charity poker event. He and
Garner announced their divorce on June 30th — a day after their tenth wedding anniversary.
Via his spokesperson, Affleck denied the accusations, and a source close to the actor told
People that he and Ouzounian had a professional and platonic relationship only, adding:
"There has never been a romantic or sexual relationship."
Weeks after the divorce announcement, Page Six published photos that appeared to show
the pair exchanging a bottle of Champagne outside his home.
Garner took the less-than-ideal situation in stride, telling Vanity Fair:
"[Ouzounian] had nothing to do with our decision to divorce. She was not a part of the equation.
Bad judgment? Yes. It's not great for your kids for [a nanny] to disappear from their lives."
Keeping her priority on her children,
she vowed to keep herself offline in light of media negativity, insisting:
"I cannot let anger or hurt be my engine."
Growing up, Ben Affleck didn't have the ideal family upbringing. In 2020,
the actor opened up about his roots in an interview for The New York Times, saying:
"There’s a lot of alcoholism and mental illness in
my family. The legacy of that is quite powerful and sometimes hard to shake."
Affleck has had his fair share of problems with alcohol misuse,
with specific episodes covered salaciously by the media. He explained:
"It took me a long time to fundamentally, deeply,
without a hint of doubt, admit to myself that I am an alcoholic."
"I was like, 'I can just go back.'
I was fine before.
You know, I just need to take a break.
I just need to slow down. I'm okay."
The Oscar winner first checked himself into rehab at 29 years old, in 2001.
Things seemed to settle down when he found love with Garner three years later,
becoming a dad shortly after. But he's admitted that his battle with addiction
has been a lifelong struggle, telling The New York Times:
"People with compulsive behavior, and I am one, have this kind of basic discomfort all
the time that they’re trying to make go away. [...] I drank relatively normally for a long
time. What happened was that I started drinking more and more when my marriage
was falling apart. [...] My drinking, of course, created more marital problems."
And Affleck's problems only continued after his divorce. In 2017, the actor
experienced a relapse and secretly entered rehab. Radar reported that he was given a
one-night pass from the facility to attend that year's Oscar ceremony.
A year later, Affleck re-entered rehab after he started dating Playboy model Shauna Sexton,
forcing the star to publicly state that she had no influence over his
drinking. Garner reportedly staged an intervention for her ex-husband,
with the paparazzi taking snaps of her driving Affleck to a facility for treatment. While
he seemed to be doing well after his third stint, he appeared to relapse a year later
during a drunken Halloween night when he was seen stumbling backward into a car.
"You know you can't do this forever."
"I can barely do it now."
Per TMZ, when asked about the incident the next morning, Affleck took it in his stride saying:
"It happens, it's a slip, but I'm not going to let it derail me."
Reckoning with his own addiction and family history has given Affleck some perspective
when it comes to his split from Garner. He told The New York Times that his divorce was, quote,
"the biggest regret of my life," but that he had moved beyond the point of feeling shame.
"I never thought I was going to get divorced."
"I really didn't want to be a split family."
"I wasn't who I thought I was."
During an appearance on "The Howard Stern Show" in 2021, Ben Affleck expressed frustration over the
way in which tabloid media had reported on his divorce from Jennifer Garner.
"During the divorce they printed f---ing horrible lies."
He went on to say:
"The truth was, we took our time, we made the decision. [...] We grew apart. We had a
marriage that didn't work. This happens. It's somebody that I love and respect,
but to whom I shouldn't be married any longer."
Despite the pair no longer being a fit for each other, they have consistently
made co-parenting their kids a priority. Garner told Vanity Fair that her friendship
with Affleck acts as the foundation for raising their three children, saying:
"Sure, I lost the dream of dancing with my husband at my daughter's wedding. But you
should see their faces when he walks through the door. And if you see your
kids love someone so purely and wholly, then you're going to be friends with that person."
Perhaps the pressure of constant media attention overshadowed this Hollywood duo. If anything,
it uncovered the cracks in the relationship. Even after they announced their split,
however, Garner spoke positively of her ex-husband to Vanity Fair,
admitting that she would "remake that decision" to marry him:
"He’s the love of my life. [...] He’s the most brilliant person in any room,
the most charismatic, the most generous. He's just a complicated guy. I always say,
'When his sun shines on you, you feel it.' But when the sun is shining elsewhere,
it's cold. He can cast quite a shadow."
Though their marriage wasn't meant to be, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner
have always emphasized their mutual love and respect for each other. Post split,
Garner opened up to Vanity Fair about her ex-husband and explained that they were
committed to working together through the divorce and through their shared parenting duties, saying:
"He's still the only person who really knows the truth about things. And I'm
still the only person that knows some of his truths."
Though their marriage weathered its fair share of tabloid scandals, the former couple's
focus has always been on co-parenting their three children. Affleck told Today in 2017:
"If you recognize that you both have the best interest of the kids at heart,
it's quite a special connection. We're the only two people in the
world who care this much about these three kids."
"All my kids are really smart and brilliant and creative and just sharp."
Still, Garner doesn't appear to miss a chance to poke fun at her ex-husband. The mom of three was
quick to quip back when asked about Affleck's infamous phoenix back tattoo, telling Vanity Fair:
"You know what we would say in my hometown about that? 'Bless his heart.' A phoenix rising from
the ashes. Am I the ashes in this scenario? I take umbrage. I refuse to be the ashes."