Ben Affleck opens up about sobriety and alcoholism: ‘I don’t want my children to pay for my sins’
Actor portrays an alcoholic basketball coach in new film ‘The Way Back’
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Your support makes all the difference.Ben Affleck opened up about his experience with sobriety and alcoholism in a new TV interview on Thursday.
The actor, who portrays an alcoholic basketball coach in his new film The Way Back, sat down with Diane Sawyer on Good Morning America to talk about the role as well as his personal life.
Affleck, who has attended rehab twice in the past three years, has openly discussed his alcohol struggles.
During his conversation with Sawyer, he told the host he has worried about how alcoholism could possibly affect his family – specifically, the three children he shares with Jennifer Garner, with whom he was married for 13 years before their 2018 divorce.
“I really don’t want my children to pay for my sins,” he told Sawyer.
Affleck further discussed his experience as a parent, adding: “I took the last half of the year off. And I just got to be dad. Drive them to school, pick them up. Go to the swim meet.
“That’s where the parenting happens – it’s in the cracks. It’s in the moments where you’re just taking them back from soccer and they see something profound or they talk about how they’re really feeling about something. That’s where you get to be the parent. That’s the joy of it. And that’s what I don’t want to miss.”
He told Sawyer about his new role in The Way Back: “I think my favourite scene in this movie – and this is a little bit of a spoiler – is where my character loses his job.
“Because it’s really about consequences. And you understand how desperate he is to not have to suffer those consequences and how painful that can be.”
The Way Back will be released on 6 March in the US and 24 April in the UK.
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