It goes without saying that Ben Affleck is a beloved world-famous actor and director. He over the public’s hearts with his star-making turn in Good Will Hunting, eventually becoming a respected director for Oscar-winning films like Argo.
But what if his charm hides a dark side that most of us never even noticed. There are many shady things about Ben Affleck that everyone seems to ignore. And once you learn about them, you’ll never look at him the same way again!
He allegedly cheated with the nanny
Many celebrities have some high-profile divorces, and Affleck is no exception. But his divorce from Jennifer Garner came with a twist: he was allegedly cheating on her with his children’s nanny!
The rumors started when people saw Affleck and nanny Christine Ouzounian together in the Bahamas in 2015. He was still married to Garner at the time. And while Affleck denied any rumors of an affair, the fact that he took the nanny to Vegas on a private jet looked pretty darn suspicious.
Sources claim that Garner was furious, and Ouzounian was let go one day after Garner and Affleck announced their divorce. Making it more suspicious is the fact that Ouzounian and Affleck were photographed hanging out together after she was fired.
He lied about his tattoo being fake
A year after Affleck and Garner announced their split, Affleck was spotted with a large, garishly colorful phoenix tattoo covering the entirety of his back. Photos of the tattoo were leaked while Affleck was filming the movie Live by Night. The tattoo caused a sensation on social media.
Trying to do damage control, Affleck went on Extra to explain. “[It’s] fake for a movie,” he told Mario Lopez in 2016. “I actually do have a number of tattoos but I try to have them in places where you don’t have to do a lot of cover up. They get sort of addictive, tattoos, after a while.”
But in 2019, Affleck admitted on The Ellen Degeneres Show that the phoenix tattoo is real. “It’s meaningful to me. I like it. It’s not something I sort of kept private. The sentiment ran against… but I love my tattoo, I’m happy with it.”
At any rate, Jennifer Garner got the last laugh with her reaction to his ink. “You know what we would say in my hometown about that?,” she told Vanity Fair in 2016. “‘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.”
He groped Hilarie Burton on TRL
Many celebrity scandals boil down to “he said, she said.” However, Affleck made the big mistake of causing a major-league scandal on national television!
During MTV’s Total Request Live back in 2003, host Hilarie Burton interviewed Affleck. During that interview, we can clearly see him wrap his arm around Burton and grab her breast without consent or warning.
This incident largely flew under the radar until she tweeted about it in 2017 during the height of #MeToo. With the public pressure on, Affleck tweeted an apology:
Affleck may have claimed to be sorry, but that wasn’t the end of Affleck’s groping scandals…
He allegedly groped multiple women at a Golden Globes party
After the Hilarie Burton scandal hit Twitter, other women came forward to accuse Ben Affleck of groping them. Annamarie Tendler (wife of famous comedian John Mulaney) wrote on Twitter, “I would also love to get an apology from Ben Affleck who grabbed my a** at a Golden Globes party in 2014.” She added, “Like most women in these situations I didn’t say anything but I have thought a lot about what I’d say if I ever saw him again.”
The Good Place writer Jen Statsky also took to Twitter with allegations against Affleck:
And yes, for those doing the math: he was still married to Jennifer Garner when he allegedly did these things!
He allegedly kept quiet about Harvey Weinstein
Speaking of #MeToo, that movement kicked off with a series of Harvey Weinstein accusations. They painted a picture of a man who used his wealth and power to abuse countless women over the years.
When the floodgates of accusations opened up, Affleck posted on Facebook about how the news made him sick and how Hollywood had to do a better job of protecting women. “I am saddened and angry that a man who I worked with used his position of power to intimidate, sexually harass and manipulate many women over decades,” he wrote.
But here’s the twist: actress Rose McGowan, one of Weinstein’s accusers, claims that Affleck knew exactly what the predatory Hollywood producer has been doing all these years. She wrote a scathing tweet to Affleck:
He was accused of being ‘duplicitous’ by David Fincher
In 2014, Affleck received critical acclaim for starring in Gone Girl, directed by David Fincher. But after filming, Fincher had some bizarre praise for Affleck. Specifically, Fincher claimed the only reason Affleck plays such a good cheater onscreen is because he is so duplicitous in real life!
In his DVD commentary for the film, Fincher said that Affleck was “extraordinarily good” at faking innocent conversations on the phone. “If I was his wife, I think I would be very suspicious, always, of whoever just called because he has a real gift at being able to insinuate a conversation,” Fincher said.
He also gave a backhanded compliment to the way Affleck could surreptitiously look at his phone in character without other characters seeing it. “Ben is very subtle, and there’s a kind of indirectness to the way he can do those things. Probably because he’s so duplicitous.”
He shut down a film set because he refused to wear a Yankees hat
Perhaps Fincher felt free to diss Affleck on the Gone Girl DVD commentary because there had been some bad blood between them during filming.
Specifically, Fincher wanted Affleck to wear a New York Yankees hat for a scene. But since Affleck is a Red Sox fan, he refused.
“I said, ‘David, I love you, I would do anything for you,’ but I will not wear a Yankees hat. I just can’t,” Affleck later told The New York Times.
Fincher was not feeling the love. He had less-than-flattering words about the incident for Decider. “Being from Boston and not being very professional as an actor, Ben refused to wear a Yankees cap,” he said.
Things got ugly, and Affleck actually shut down the production for four long (and costly) days.
The big takeaway here is that Affleck was willing to waste a ton of other people’s time and money because he refused to wear a hat! Fincher finally got Affleck to film the scene by changing it to a Mets hat.
He got banned for allegedly counting cards at a casino
In 2014, Las Vegas’s Hard Rock Casino banned him from playing blackjack after he won $800,000 in one night, alleging that he was counting cards. Affleck denies any wrongdoing, claiming he merely got good at playing the game.
“I took some time to learn the game and became a decent blackjack player. And once I became decent, the casinos asked me not to play blackjack,” he told Details.
But TMZ claims Affleck’s gambling was a factor in his divorce. Furthermore, they claim he’s managed to get kicked out of casinos in the past.
Affleck’s alcohol addiction has been widely reported, and he’s completed three public stints in rehab since 2001. But RadarOnline reported in 2018 that Jennifer Garner feared he traded a drinking problem for a gambling problem.