Ben Affleck wishes ‘no one knew’ he was sober as actor speaks out on lifestyle change

Ben Affleck has spoken about being sober and said he wished fewer people knew about his experience with alcohol, but said he 'understood' why that wasn't going to be the case.

The actor recently gave an interview to GQ where he was asked about all sorts of things, including his relationship with Jennifer Lopez (she filed for divorce last year after two years of marriage) and a role from a movie that gained critical praise but you probably haven't seen.

This is the 2020 movie The Way Back, for which the star gained a lot of praise from critics for his performance as an alcoholic tradesman grappling with his various demons.

In case you want to check the film out, it's got an 85 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, though it had the misfortune to open in cinemas just a couple of weeks before the Covid-19 pandemic forced countries to impose lockdowns which resulted in the closure of movie theatres.

Ben Affleck was asked about the challenges he faced in playing an alcoholic character (Marcus Ingram/Getty Images)

As for his part in it, Affleck told GQ he was aware that people knew he was a recovering alcoholic and as such he understood he was 'going to have to have a conversation about this'.

"I maybe underestimated the degree to which - I didn’t have any ambitions to be the national spokesman for recovering alcoholics," Affleck explained.

"And not because I have any shame with it or anything. I just find that, I’ve been sober for more than five years, it’s just not something that is at the forefront of my mind.

"It’s not the central preoccupation of my life. But at the time, it was something that I was definitely wrestling with and thinking about."

The actor said he was 'totally aware that my own lived experience meant that I was able to bring something to' his role in The Way Back, and said that if he had the choice then people wouldn't have known.

However, he added that he 'understood doing this job and doing this life' that wasn't going to happen.

Affleck said: "If I could have, I would’ve kept the fact that I’m sober anonymous, because I think it works better that way.

Affleck said he could draw on 'my own lived experience' for the film, but if he could he would have kept his sobriety anonymous (Warner Bros.)

"And I didn’t ask for that to become something people knew about. But I can’t complain about it either. I understood doing this job and doing this life, if something happened like that, people were going to know about it, and they did.

"And I have arrived at a place where I think of that experience as part of my life in authentically grateful ways, whereas I didn’t think such a thing was possible before.

"So that sort of is what it is."