Ben Affleck’s kids aren’t exactly running to their dad for dating advice.
During a Thursday, September 24, appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the Animals actor, 54, revealed how his three children with ex-wife Jennifer Garner — Violet, 20, Seraphina, 17, and Samuel, 14 — recently roasted him at the dinner table when he tried to dispense advice on their love lives.
“Now, I, like, give advice or try to talk to them like a parent, as you do … but what I’ve found is that now it’s not only one teenager rolling their eyes,” he said. “I’ll kind of launch into something at the dinner table and now I catch them giving each other looks. And I realize I’m the caricature in this story. I see them be like, ‘Dad is saying this and that…’”
Affleck quipped, “Why am I the bad guy?” admitting that “I couldn’t imagine I wouldn’t be the cool dad.”
“My kids were talking at dinner and they’ll talk about their friends and the drama and their relationships,” he said. “And I have some lived experience, I think, that’s worth sharing… some lessons that I [learned]. These are the kinds of things we give to our children.”
Affleck continued, “I said, ‘You know, well, the thing about that relationship there with that person…’ The 17-year-old just turns to me and goes, ‘Oh, like you’re the expert on relationships.’”
The Oscar winner shared that his middle child also once hit him with a zinger while they were visiting a bookstore.
“We’re just browsing around and there’s some book by a French guy and it’s called I’m Sorry for Everything, and my kid immediately turns to me, deadpan, and goes, ‘Oh, look, Dad, it’s your autobiography,'” he said.
Affleck was married to Garner, also 54, from 2005 to 2018. The couple announced their separation in June 2015 and finalized their divorce three years later.
In 2021, Affleck reignited his romance with Jennifer Lopez, to whom he was previously engaged from 2002 to 2004, and the couple got married in July 2022. Two years later, Us confirmed in August 2024 that Lopez, 57, had filed for divorce. The split was officially finalized in February 2025.
Earlier this year, Garner opened up about her “incredible” coparenting dynamic with her ex.
“My kids are a little bigger [now]. Their dad — ex-husband — has become this incredible coparent,” she gushed to Entertainment Weekly in July. “And I have this unbelievable [business] partner who produces with me things that we control and are able to help keep in L.A. … I love making movies anywhere, but I really want to make movies at home.”
“He’s wonderful. He takes care of them. He’s a great partner in that way. And that’s very freeing,” Garner added.
