Once again, Matt Damon finds himself in the unenviable position of reportedly having to watch as his best friend Ben Affleck goes through a personal crisis and intense tabloid drama involving his love for Jennifer Lopez.
As the entertainment media continues to report on Affleck and Lopez’s marital turmoil, with predictions of an impending divorce, Damon is “desperate” to keep his longtime friend from relapsing into his addiction to alcohol, The Daily Mail reported.
“The Martian” star also wants to keep Affleck focused on his acting and directing work, so that he doesn’t lose sight of his professional goals amid the alleged upheaval that could lead to the end of his two-year marriage, the Daily Mail also said.
“Matt tried to warn Ben when he got back together with J-Lo that this could happen,” an insider told the Daily Mail. “Matt was there to help Ben get it together after their first split and he felt like this would happen again.”
US actress Jennifer Lopez and actor Ben Affleck arrive for a special screening of “Marry Me” at the Directors Guild of America (DGA) in Los Angeles, February 8, 2022. (Photo by VALERIE MACON / AFP) (Photo by VALERIE MACON/AFP via Getty Images)
Affleck has high regard for Damon’s opinion, and not just because they’re creative and producing partners who have been friends since their childhoods in Boston, the Daily Mail reported. Affleck also sees how Damon has enjoyed a stable and loving marriage with his wife Luciana Barroso for more than 18 years.
“Matt has had a successful marriage for years, and Ben has always been in awe of this,” the source told the Daily Mail about the friends, who famously co-authored the Oscar-winning screenplay for the 1997 film, “Good Will Hunting.”
“As things started falling apart (with Lopez), Matt told Ben that he supports whatever choice he makes but he wants him to jump in and focus on his work,” the source said.
After Affleck, 51, and Lopez, 54, married in 2022, the source said, the “Argo” director tended to focus on his mega-star wife’s film and music projects. Affleck and Lopez began dating again in 2021, rekindling a high-profile love affair than ran from 2002 to 2004. When they were together in the 2000s, Affleck also tended to put his career on the back-burner, the Daily Mail source said.
For that reason, Damon has reportedly pressed Affleck in recent weeks, “What has she ever done for your career?’
One way Damon may be able to keep Affleck on track is that they continue to run their Artists Equity production company together. The two, who last worked together on the 2023 film “Air,” also are scheduled to produce and co-star in a thriller together called “RIP.”
Damon is Affleck’s “only real guy friend,” and “he would not let him get back on the bottle,” the source said.
Affleck has long struggled with alcohol addiction, which was a factor in his 2018 divorce from his first wife Jennifer Garner and which has led to several stints in rehab. But another report, from earlier this month, said that Affleck is staying sober and “healthy” amid the turmoil.
Affleck also is the spouse pressing for the divorce, according to the report from In Touch Weekly. He’s been telling friends that “he’s looking forward to the next chapter. He wants a life with serenity and peace, and escaping this roller coaster will be a relief.”
When news began circulating in 2021 that Affleck had rekindled his romance with Lopez, Damon publicly declared that it “would be awesome” if they got back together. Damon was appearing on the “Today” show and hedged a bit about commenting on the romance reports. But he finally said he’d be happy to see the former lovers make a go of things again.
“I love them both,” Damon said. “I hope it’s true.”
But in private, Damon’s optimism was more guarded, according to the Daily Mail report.
After all, Damon opened up in a 2015 interview about how Affleck’s first romantic entanglement with Lopez hurt his career. That’s because the romance landed him the headlines for all the wrong reasons, Damon explained to The Hollywood Reporter. Rather than the world seeing his friend as a talented actor and filmmaker, it began to see him as a superficial, fame-seeking movie hunk.
“It was like he was being cast in a role, that he was a talentless kind of meathead, with his whole relationship with Jennifer Lopez. He just got cast as this person that he wasn’t,” Damon told the Hollywood Reporter in 2015. “It was just really painful. It was painful to be his friend, because it wasn’t fair, you know? To my mind, nobody really got him at all.”
About Affleck, Damon also insisted to the The Hollywood Reporter: “There’s nobody who’s more misunderstood.”
Indeed, Affleck’s career began to unravel after his relationship with Lopez became the subject of intense media scrutiny and after they co-starred together in the box office bombs “Gigli” in 2003 and the 2004 romantic comedy “Jersey Girl.” GQ said that all the tabloid notoriety around Affleck’s romance with Lopez made him the “world’s most over-exposed actor.”
Twenty years later, Affleck is again facing intense media scrutiny involving Lopez, in part because she likes to court publicity, as he pointed out in her self-financed documentary about their romance, “The Greatest Love Story Never Told.”
But even as Affleck said he prefers to be more guarded about his private life, he’s still a regular paparazzi target.
Over the past month, paparazzi have followed him around Los Angeles, after TMZ and other outlets learned that he had moved out of the $60 million Beverly Hills estate that he and Lopez purchased last year. Affleck has been living in a $100,000-a-month mansion in Brentwood, near the home of his ex-wife Jennifer Garner, with whom he shares three children, 18, 15, and 12.
Over the past week, Lopez was spotted enjoying a solo vacation in Italy and Paris, after abruptly canceling her planned summer “This is Me … Now” tour, amid reports of dismal ticket sales and lukewarm reviews for her album. A source told Page Six that Lopez used the time in Europe to “reflect on her marriage.”
On Wednesday, the couple were seen coming and going separately from a West Hollywood building where Affleck has an office for his production company.
People magazine said it’s not clear why the two were at the office, though they still have professional ties. Affeck’s company is producing two upcoming films, “Unstoppable” and “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” that Lopez stars in.
