The movie may have been a bust, but Ben Affleck sees one silver lining from 2003’s Daredevil: It’s on that set he fell in love with wife Jennifer Garner.
The Oscar-winning actor turned director, 41, who gave a candid interview to Playboy magazine in its latest issue, said the comic book action hero flick’s failure still, to this day, “just kills” him. “I love that story, that character, and the fact that it got f-cked up the way it did stays with me,” Affleck said of the one movie he actually regrets doing in his career. “Maybe that’s part of the motivation to do Batman,” he joked.
After the announcement was made back in September that Affleck would play Batman in the upcoming Zack Snyder-drected film, the Internet outrage over the casting news had little affect on the seasoned star: “If I thought the result would be another Daredevil, I’d be out there picketing myself,” he told the magazine while laughing. “Why would I make the movie if I didn’t think it was going to be good and that I could be good in it?”
Despite Daredevil‘s shortcomings, the actor did find one redemptive aspect from the flick: “That’s where I found my wife,” he said. “We met on Pearl Harbor, which people hate, but we fell in love on Daredevil.” Affleck and Garner first started dating back in 2004 and married in 2005. By then, Garner, 41, had already been once married and divorced to her Alias costar Scott Foley. Affleck had just broken off his high-profile engagement to Jennifer Lopez.
After 2003’s Gigli (in which he starred with J.Lo) and subsequent films (The Paycheck, 2003, and Surviving Christmas, 2004) were ill-received by critics and fans alike, Affleck fell into a murky ditch resulting from the “perfect storm” of flopped films and mass public attention. “I sunk into a morass,” he said of his career. “My wife was definitely around then. 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.”
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“She is by leaps and bounds the most important person to me in that respect,” he added of Garner, with whom he shares three adorable youngsters: Violet, 7, Seraphina, 4, and Samuel, 21 months. “Over the past 10 years she has allowed me to have a stable home life while accomplishing my professional goals.”
Despite their wonderful dynamics at home, the Gone Girl star says he and the Dallas Buyers Club actress will not be sharing a screen anytime soon. “My wife and I made Pearl Harbor and Daredevil. With our track record, I don’t know if anyone’s looking for a three-quel,” he joked.
“By the way, she won most of the fights in the movie,” Affleck said of Daredevil. “Which was a pretty good predictor of what would happen down the road — my wife, holding swords and beating the living sh-t out of me.”
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