Ben Affleck on JLO and 'Gigli': Worst Year of my Life - Fox News

What a blast from the past!

Jennifer Lopez’s ex Ben Affleck says the year he was with the Puerto Rican superstar and filmed “Gigli” was probably the worst of his life.

Ouch!  

In an in-depth interview for Details magazine’s October issue, the Hollywood actor/director, who is getting praise for his new film “Argo,” says back in 2003 he hit rock bottom. 

“If you were looking at that one-liner on me in 2003, [it] was definitely the annus horribilis,” Affleck told the publication.

“In our culture, we get very much into shorthanding people,” he added. “I got shorthanded as That Guy: Jennifer Lopez, movies bombed, therefore he must be a sort of thoughtless dilettante, solipsistic consumer blahblahblah. It's hard to shake those sort of narratives.”

Affleck, who has settled down with fellow “Daredevil” actress Jennifer Garner, with whom he has three children, says looking back he’s learned the importance of finding “your compass,” both professionally and personally.

“People bring up 2003, and I get it. Jennifer Lopez, and 'Gigli,' and all this s**t just kind of blew up!” Affleck said. “A lot can happen. And a lot has for me.”

He says his Bennifer days “feel like ancient history.”

“I made a bunch of movies that didn't work [and] I was ending up in the tabloids. I liked ‘Sum of All Fears.’ ‘Daredevil’ I didn't at all," he said. "Some movies should have worked and didn't.”

The Massachusetts native says he used directing as an escape route to the intense media scrutiny of his love life and his career.

“I just said, I don't want to do it anymore. This is horrible. I don't want to be in this spotlight, this glare, in this way. It's tawdry, it's ugly, it's oppressive, and it's inane," Affleck said. "So I'm going to try to get away.”

As for JLO, the starlet has been recently talking about her artistic evolution as well as her former flames and current boyfriend, Casper Smart.

“You know when you are young you don’t think about things. You just go through them,” Lopez told Katie Couric in an interview last week. “Then later you look back and you think ‘What the…did that happen?”

“It takes time to get there as women,” she added in reference to finding a healthy relationship. “We are just trying to do it right. Like everyone else.”

Lopez, 43, who began dating Smart, 25, soon after announcing her divorce to salsa crooner Marc Anthony last year, says age is not an issue for her and her main squeeze. 

“It’s hard for me to think of my age because I don’t feel any different from when I first started in the business," she said. "I feel very youthful.”

She said she feels comfortable in her own skin. 

“It’s funny, until somebody brings it up I don’t think we think about it," she said. "We are just two people with similar interests and love a lot of the same things.”

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