This post contains brief discussions of alcohol addiction.
Thinking about it today, Ben Affleck and Gwyneth Paltrow might seem like an oddly matched couple, but in the ‘90s, they were pretty loved up.
In late 1997, a few months after her split from Brad Pitt, Gwyneth met a guy named Ben at a Miramax party. Ben was on the rise at the time, preparing to release Good Will Hunting, and he and Gwyneth hit it off. The pair dated on and off for three years before splitting in 2000.
If there’s one thing we know about Gwyneth, it’s that she’s pretty good at maintaining good relationships with her exes, which seems to be the case with her and Ben. In 2015, she told Howard Stern that he’s “super intelligent and really, really talented,” but that their relationship didn’t work out because “he wasn’t in a good place in his life to have a girlfriend.”
Now, thanks to some newly released excerpts from a forthcoming biography all about Gwyneth’s life and career, we have some new insight into the struggles that these two faced during their romance. In the new book, Gwyneth: The Biography, author Amy Odell writes that though Gwyneth and Ben were a good intellectual match, the Gone Girl star had “demons.”
Despite this, Gwyneth and Ben apparently had great sexual chemistry, and she “spoke openly about how much she enjoyed their sex life.” “She told [her friend makeup artist Kevyn] Aucoin one day that she loved when Affleck [engaged in a certain sex act],” Odell writes in the book.
However, no amount of physical chemistry could outweigh “his self-destructive impulses,” the book suggests, “which may have even included cheating on her.” They split in 1998, shortly after the opening of their movie, Shakespeare in Love, which won Gwyneth an Oscar for Best Actress in 1999.
Ben has talked openly about his past struggles with alcohol misuse, and first went to rehab for alcoholism in 2001. He sought treatment for alcohol addiction on subsequent occasions in 2017 and 2018, and is now happily sober.
As for his love life, Ben was engaged to Jennifer Lopez from 2002 to 2004, and after their split, he married Jennifer Garner in 2005. He and Jen Garner welcomed three children during their marriage, before separating in 2015. In 2021, he got back together with J.Lo, and they tied the knot in 2022. However, they ultimately got divorced after just over two years of marriage in 2024.
Meanwhile, Gwyneth met Chris Martin in 2002, and the pair were married by the following year. Chris and Gwyneth welcomed two children together, Apple and Moses, before announcing their split (or “conscious uncoupling”) in March 2014. Today, she is married to Brad Falchuk, whom she began dating in 2014.
If you or someone you know is struggling with substance abuse, you can call SAMHSA’s National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357) and find more resources here.
