It’s the mother of all conscious uncouplings. Hollywood’s ‘perfect couple’, Ben Affleck, 42, and Jennifer Garner, 43, are saying ‘Gone Girl’ to their decade-old marriage. The couple issued a joint statement on Tuesday night, a day after their 10th wedding anniversary, to say they are calling it quits.
“After much thought and careful consideration, we have made the difficult decision to divorce,” the couple said in a statement issued by their publicists. “We go forward with love and friendship for one another and a commitment to co-parenting our children whose privacy we ask to be respected. Thank you for understanding.”
The couple have three children: Violet, 9, Seraphina, 6, and Sam, 3.
So what went wrong to the relationship of Hollywood’s most grounded couple? tabloid! takes a look at the history of their relationship:
The meeting
He was the quintessential Hollywood heartthrob who’d appeared in films such as Good Will Hunting, Armageddon and Shakespeare in Love. She was the up and coming actress who was just about to make her debut in hit spy series Alias. When Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner first met, it was on the set of Pearl Harbor, that epic 2001 Michael Bay film, which saw Affleck and Josh Harnett fight over Kate Beckinsale’s nurse. Garner had a cameo in the film, as one of the nurses.
Love shack
He might be playing Batman in an upcoming film, but superhero fans will always hold Affleck’s 2003 film Daredevil against him. The film version of the Marvel character was thrashed by critics and fanboys alike, mostly for unoriginality. But it will always be a special one for Affleck and Garner (who plays love interest Electra in the film), because it marked the beginning of their romance. But it took the couple a year to make their relationship public. Garner was married to actor Scott Foley and Affleck was engaged to Jennifer Lopez. Then they appeared at a baseball match in 2004, and the world was smitten. Apparently, Affleck wooed her over email. How romantic!
She said, ‘Yes’!
Two years into their relationship, Affleck got down on one knee and asked Garner to be his wife on her 33rd birthday. Garner was already pregnant with their first child, Violet. Two months later, in June, they were married at a secret location in the Caribbean. “Ben is not only my husband, he has helped me in every way,” Garner told The Sun later. “He is the base of my life. He is an incredibly loving and generous man.”
Affleck also spoke of how Garner helped him deal with the aftermath of his relationship with Lopez. “My wife was definitely around then,” he told Playboy in 2013. “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’. Those were the steps forward I needed to put positive stuff on the board.”
The children
Ben and Jen, as they came to be called, have three children. Violet Anne was born on December 1, 2005. Seraphina Rose Elizabeth was born on January 6, 2009, and the youngest, Samuel Garner, was born February 27, 2012.
The careers
After a great start in Hollywood, and an Oscar for writing credits for Good Will Hunting in 1997, Affleck’s career took a nose dive in the early 2000s, with films such as Daredevil and that sad excuse for a movie, Gigli. He made a triumphant comeback to relevance with his directorial debut Gone Baby Gone, starring his brother Casey. The acclaim took him back to Hollywood’s A-list and he’s since kept up his game, with films such as The Town (2010) and Argo (2012), which won the Oscar for Best Picture. Garner is best known for her role as Sydney Bristow in the spy drama Alias. Her movie career, however, has not been stellar. Following her breakthrough role in the much-riled Daredevil, she starred in Electra, an offshoot, which was a box-office disaster. She was praised for her role in 13 Going on 30 (2004), The Invention of Lying (2009) and, to a certain extent, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (2009). Garner recently appeared in the Oscar-nominated 2013 film Dallas Buyers Club and the Al Pacino drama Danny Collins, released earlier this year.
The cracks
In 2009, Garner was asked by W magazine why Affleck does not mention her very often in interviews. She said: “Ben asks me, ‘How come when I do an interview I manage to keep you out of it completely?’ And I’m like, ‘Either because you don’t think about me or because boy magazines don’t care about what I make you for dinner. But they should!’”
But rumours of trouble in Ben and Jen Paradise have only begun gathering steam in the last few months. Rumours started doing the rounds in April that the couple were seeing counsellors in an effort to save their marriage.
In March, Garner told reporters while promoting Danny Collins that she that she was going to give her career another big push.
“Ben is super busy and I’m super happy for him,” she said. “I chose to stay home this year and just said, ‘Go for it babe. Do it all. Do Gone Girl, do Batman, do The Accountant. Do everything.’ I want that for him and I’m happy for him. And he says the same to me. Except that he’s really busy. But he understands that when I really have to do it, we figure it out.”
But with Affleck’s career not slowing down — he’s making his superhero return in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, out next year, and his next directorial venture Live by Night, also coming in 2016 — there’s room for only one Alpha actor in the Affleck-Garner household. And that. we’re assuming, has made all the difference.
