Ahead of his new movie, The Way Back, Ben Affleck is on a big press tour. However, he isn't just using this trip to promote a movie — he's also using it to come clean about his battle with alcohol addiction and the way it affected his marriage to Jennifer Garner. The two filed for divorce in 2017, but Garner has remained by his side as Affleck publicly embarks on his sobriety journey. After sitting for an interview with Diane Sawyer for Good Morning America, he passed along a message for her to read on-air aimed directly at his ex-wife.
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“What I want to say publicly and privately is, ‘Thank you. Thank you for being thoughtful, considerate, responsible, and a great mom and person,’" the journalist read.
In his recent interviews, Affleck admitted that his struggles with alcohol exacerbated the issues within his marriage.
"What happened was that I started drinking more and more when my marriage was falling apart," he told the New York Times earlier this month. "This was 2015, 2016. My drinking, of course, created more marital problems.”
And to GMA, he reflected on the difficulty of the split.
“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,” he 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.”
The Way Back, a story about a high school basketball coach who suffers from alcoholism at the expense of his marriage, hits theaters March 6.