Matt Damon Makes Rare Comment on Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez’s Relationship

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Matt Damon and Ben Affleck have been friends and collaborators for decades, but Damon, 53, recently commented on something he’s glad he and Affleck don’t have in common. While Damon has been married to his wife Luciana Bozán in 2005, Affleck’s relationships with Jennifer Lopez, Jennifer Garner, and now Lopez again have been subject to a lot of media attention. “I can’t imagine living under that kind of scrutiny,” said Damon in an interview with Radio Times Podcast. While promoting his movie The Instigators, in which he co-stars with Ben’s brother Casey Affleck, he spoke about this major difference in his and Ben’s careers.

Of Affleck’s love life, Damon said, “it’s been like that for 25 years and we’ve had parallel careers in a lot of ways and so I’m fortunate to have been kind of excused from that part of [fame].” Indeed, Damon and Affleck both sprung into Hollywood around the same time with their film Good Will Hunting, which the friends wrote and starred in. Since then, the two have both risen in the ranks of the film world, winning Oscars and Golden Globes.

“That magazine culture that was so huge … 25 years ago [they] kind of ignored me,” he added, referring to the tabloid attention that “Bennifer” (Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez) received in the early 2000s.

Comparatively, Damon mused, his personal life doesn’t hold a candle to the drama inspired by Affleck’s. “Right, like a guy who’s married, it’s so boring,” he said. “What would sell those things were scandal and sex and all that stuff that people would read … and as long as you didn’t do any of that stuff it wasn’t really worth their time to wait to take your picture and so I ended up kind of getting left alone.

Damon and Bozán share three daughters, 18-year-old Isabella, 16-year-old Gia, and 14-year-old Stella. Damon is also stepfather to Bozán’s daughter from her previous marriage, Alexia, 24, and considers himself “an extra dad” to his eldest.