Ben Affleck says his divorce from Jennifer Garner has changed his acting career

Ben Affleck has opened up about how his divorce from Jennifer Garner has helped him take on more complex movie roles.

The 48-year-old actor touched on his split from the Alias actress, 48, during a roundtable interview with The Hollywood Reporter.

Affleck said of his film The Way Back, "For me, the movie was much more about the fact that — whether it's having lived enough years, having seen enough ups and downs, having had children and divorce — I'm at a point now in my life where I have sufficient life experience to bring to a role to make it really interesting for me."

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Affleck reflected on how these life experiences have helped his craft.

"Growing older and having had more intense and meaningful personal experiences has made acting much more interesting for me and in turn made me drawn to the kinds of movies that are about people who are flawed," he said.

Affleck and Garner split in 2015 and settled their divorce three years later. The exes share three children: daughters Violet, 14, and Seraphina, 11 and son Samuel, eight.

In a New York Times piece, he called his divorce from Garner, "the biggest regret of my life."

He also detailed how he battled to come to terms with the life change in a Good Morning America with Diane Sawyer.

"I didn't want to get divorced, I didn't want to be a divorced person, I really didn't want to be a split family with my children," Affleck said. "It upset me because it meant I wasn't who I thought I was and that was so painful and so disappointing. In myself."

READ MORE: Ben Affleck and ex-girlfriend Ana de Armas still talk 'several times a day' despite breakup

The actor went on to date his Deep Water co-star Ana de Armas at the start of 2020. However, in late January 2021 they'd already called it quits.

"Ben is no longer dating Ana," a source told People. "She broke it off. Their relationship was complicated. Ana doesn't want to be Los Angeles based and Ben obviously has to since his kids live in Los Angeles."

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