Affleck’s life in the firing line

Ben Affleck is no longer public enemy No. 1, said Chris Heath in GQ. Throughout the early 2000s, the actor was under constant attack by the tabloid press. They poured scorn on his romance with actress and singer Jennifer Lopez—claiming the relationship was a media stunt—and mocked his involvement in critical flops like Pearl Harbor and Gigli. “I was the designated person to loathe,” he says. “What was that guy’s name who killed his wife and dumped her off the side of a boat? [Scott] Peterson. I remember thinking he gets slightly better treatment than I do in the press. At least they had to say ‘alleged killer.’” Affleck’s naïveté helped fuel the hate. “Car dealerships would often say, ‘Hey, you can drive this Rolls-Royce for free.’ The Boston kid in me thought, ‘This is great!’ But this image of a young guy in a Rolls-Royce was very off-putting to people.” Unable to cope with the media attention, Affleck and Lopez broke up, and the actor retreated from the public eye to quietly reconsider his future. Affleck reinvented himself as a director, and his latest film, Argo, has been praised by the very same critics who once derided him as talentless and smug. “I’m not the most loathsome man in the world [anymore],” he says. “I’ve dropped to No. 9.”

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