As we saw yesterday, Ben Affleck flew to Atlanta earlier this week to be with his kids. Jennifer Garner is shooting a movie there. According to PEOPLE, there’s a guest house on Jennifer’s rental property. And on Wednesday, while she was working, he took his kids out for playtime. She’s joined him on location several times before their split during filming and looked after the kids. Do you remember hearing about him joining her on location, before they announced the divorce, to look after the kids? Perhaps. But this is the kind of information they want out there, front and centre, now that they’re breaking up. Through it all, whether or not he cheated, whether or not he has alcohol and gambling issues, Ben is a great dad, OK?
Since Ben and Jennifer confirmed that it’s over, some of you have brought up Gone Girl, and his performance as Nick Dunne. Well before the movie came out, when Ben was initially confirmed to play the part, I wrote that he was perfect for the role. Here’s what I posted:
“Because even though on paper he’s that guy – tall, handsome, dimples, jaw – there’s always been a hint of something that can’t be trusted about Ben Affleck. He’s 85% believable. But you can always smell that 15%, right?”
David Fincher, who directed Gone Girl, totally smelled it. And looking back at his comments last year, during promoting of Gone Girl, there’s a whole new dimension to the situation. This is what Fincher told NPR about Ben’s portrayal of Nick Dunne:
“Ben is extremely bright and he's been through situations that are very similar to this, and he has a, he has a great sense of humor and great wit about what this situation is and how frustrating it is, and he was able to, obviously, draw on that stuff to be able to portray somebody who, you know, puts one foot in his mouth and then goes another two days and puts the other one. And that was, I think, sort of a key to empathizing, and I don't know that it made the character more likeable, because he is kind of frustrating in a certain way, but he's very human.”
Even more interesting is what Fincher said about Ben’s understanding of the character and how that affected the performance during the Gone Girl DVD commentary:
"This is something that Ben is extraordinarily good at, when he has to cook up a phone conversation, when has to hear somebody on the other end of the phone. It's kinda stunning how ... if I was his wife, I think I would be very suspicious always of whoever just called."
I KNOW, RIGHT???
There’s more:
"(In these scenes) He has to do these things in the foreground where he takes out his phone and looks at it and he puts it away so his sister doesn't see it. There are people who do that and it's too pointed. But Ben is very very subtle and there's a kind of indirectness to the way he can do those things. Probably because he's so duplicitous."
Seriously.
SERIOUSLY.
Thanks V!