Even though the phrase “Bennifer” may bring back memories of butterfly clips and frosted lip gloss, everything goes out of style eventually. Nearly 20 years after their romance made headlines around the world, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez are still spending time together.
According to reports, Ben Affleck has been picked up in a white SUV and driven to JLo’s Los Angeles residence. When one considers their public relationship, it is simple to comprehend why they would keep their hangouts a secret. On the set of the tragic Gigli, the two met for the first time in 2002. The two played gangsters trying to kidnap a neurodivergent man who fell in love. Both at the box office and with critics, who said that Affleck and Lopez lacked chemistry, the film bombed.
Off-camera, it was a different tale. In June 2002, Lopez filed for divorce from second husband Cris Judd, and shortly after, she made public her relationship with the Good Will Hunting actor. By November, the “Waiting for Tonight” singer was sporting a new rock. With a 6-carat pink diamond surrounded by smaller white diamonds on either side, Affleck made the proposal.
Both the ring and J. Lo’s music video for “Jenny from the Block” received a lot of media coverage. Bennifer was photographed by photographers while filming in several cities during the fall before the footage was finally made public in November. There were numerous scenes where the couple displayed their love for one another.
Even when Dateline’s Pat O’Brien invited them to their Vancouver rental house to talk about their relationship, they wouldn’t reveal when they first started dating. It’s impossible to pin it down, Lopez added. “First, we grew close. That is the absolute truth.
On the day of their September 2003 nuptials, Lopez promised to alter her name to Jennifer Affleck. But they never reached the altar since they called off the wedding a few days beforehand due to “excessive media attention.”
In January 2004, they made their final separation announcement. In June 2004, Lopez would wed Marc Anthony, while Affleck also found new love with Jennifer Garner that year.
Even though their relationship didn’t work out, Affleck and Lopez have only been complimentary of one another in the media. “Oh, my God. It was just a lot of pressure,” she said on PeopleTV’s The Jess Cagle Interview in 2016. “We just happened to be together at the birth of the tabloids.” She also said, “I think different time, different thing, who knows what could’ve happened, but there was a genuine love there.”
She was described as “the hardest-working person I’ve come across in this business. She has great talent, but she has also worked very hard for her success, and I’m so happy for her that she seems, at long last, to be getting the credit she deserves.” by Affleck in April 2021.
The couple’s second official engagement was announced in April 2022. Lopez stated that the actor proposed to her about 20 years after they first broke up.
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Table of Contents
What To Know About Jennifer Lopez
On July 24, 1969, in the Bronx neighborhood of New York City, Jennifer Lynn Lopez was born. Guadalupe Rodriguez and David Lopez, her parents, are from Puerto Rico. She has two sisters: Lynda, her younger sister, and Leslie, her older sister. Her father was an insurance agent who worked the night shift. Her mother ran the household. When Jennifer was born, the family was residing in a compact apartment in the Castle Hill district. Her parents eventually purchased a two-story home a few years later.
When Jennifer was five years old, she began taking singing and dance lessons. In order to keep their three daughters out of trouble, her parents encouraged them to put on shows at home where they would sing and dance in front of their friends and each other. Lopez spent her entire academic career attending Catholic institutions. She played softball for her high school and competed in national track meets. She also participated in gymnastics. Lopez applied for and was hired for the part of My Little Girl, a low-budget independent movie, during her senior year of high school.
After having this experience, JLo decided she wanted to be a well-known movie star. That was a “very dumb” idea, according to her parents, because “no Latinos did that.” She enrolled in Baruch College to appease her parents, but she left after the first semester.
Dance Career
Jlo left her parents’ home after just one semester of college and moved into an apartment in Manhattan due to arguments over her desire to pursue a career in acting and dancing. She soon made appearances in local productions of Oklahoma! and Jesus Christ Superstar. She was then recruited for the Golden Musicals of Broadway chorus, which went on a five-month tour of Europe. From then, she was hired to work as a dancer, vocalist, and choreographer on the Japanese television program Synchronicity. She appeared with the New Kids on the Block at the 18th Annual American Music Awards in 1991 as their backup dancer.
Soon after, she was hired by In Living Color to perform as a Fly Girl dancer. She relocated to Los Angeles for the position after outpacing 2,000 candidates. JLo opted to pursue an acting career in 1993 while still a regular cast member.
Career in Acting
From 1993 through 1995, Lopez played supporting roles on television and in movies. She landed the lead role in the biopic Selena in 1995, and that became her breakthrough performance. Jennifer portrayed the late Tejano singer Selena in the film, who was murdered by a former friend, coworker, and fan club president. Then, among many more movies, Jennifer continued to make appearances in Anaconda, Out of Sight, The Wedding Planner, and An Unfinished Life.
JLo and Ben Affleck co-starred in the romantic comedy Gigli in August 2003. The movie was a financial disaster and is regarded as one of the worst movies of all time. The film’s dismal reviews were ascribed to both the unfavorable news that surfaced before its release and the media coverage of Lopez and Affleck’s engagement, which mainly overshadowed the movie.
Later, Lopez would say that this was the lowest point of her professional life. Alongside Affleck, Lopez played a supporting part in the 2004 movie Jersey Girl. The opening fifteen minutes of the movie are devoted to her character dying while giving birth. Following Affleck and Lopez’s split, there was extensive media coverage, leading to the rumor that “they may need to put Lopez in a coffin on the poster if they want anyone to come.”
JLo and Jane Fonda co-starred in the romantic comedy Monster-in-Law in May 2005. The movie was a box office hit, and the marketing played up Lopez’s “Gigli-and-tabloid tarnished image.”
In the 2016 television drama Shades of Blue on NBC, Lopez played Detective Harlee Santos, a single mother and police officer who goes undercover for the FBI to look into her own squad. With 8.6 million viewers for its launch on January 7, 2016, Shades of Blue gave the network its most popular Thursday debut in seven years. The second season of Shades of Blue, which debuted in March 2017, got picked up for production. The show received a third season renewal in the same month.
A group of strippers in New York City conned wealthy men, according to a true incident that served as the basis for the 2019 movie Hustlers, which Lopez both starred in and executive produced. With $33.2 million, Lopez had the highest opening weekend at the box office for a live-action movie thanks to her portrayal of an experienced stripper. The Golden Globes, Screen Actors Guild Awards, Critics’ Choice Movie Awards, and Independent Spirit Awards all recognized Lopez for Best Supporting Actress.
Personal Life
JLo has been in several well-known romances. She has dated Casper Smart, a backup dancer, Sean Combs, and Ben Affleck. She has three previous marriages. In 1997, Lopez wed Ojani Noa. They split up in 1998. She then wed Cris Judd, a backup dancer, in 2001, although they later divorced. In 2004, she wed the musician Marc Anthony; their fraternal twins, a son and a daughter were born in 2008. Lopez made the announcement that she was divorcing Anthony in 2011. Since 2017, she has been seeing former baseball star, Alex Rodriguez. They exchanged vows in March 2019.
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What To Know About Ben Affleck
On August 15, 1972, Chris and Tim Affleck gave birth to Benjamin Géza Affleck-Boldt in Berkeley, California. Ben’s parents, an aspiring playwright and a janitor who also worked as a carpenter and bookie, respectively, raised him in a public school. Ben’s mother was also a teacher. Ben’s younger brother Casey was born here after the family relocated to Falmouth, Massachusetts when he was three years old. The couple ultimately made Cambridge their permanent home, when his parents eventually got divorced.
Ben’s family was quite active in Cambridge’s artistic community. Ben and his brother spent time with artists and went to theater shows from an early age. Both of the Affleck boys’ auditions were set up thanks to his mother’s friendship with a local casting agent. Ben’s mother supported him in his acting, but she never pressured him to pursue acting as a career; instead, she wanted him to become a teacher.
Ben Affleck first met Matt Damon, who was two years older than him, when he was eight years old. The lads connected right away and grew close friends over time. Together, they attended acting school and later started their Hollywood careers.
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His Career
When he was only seven years old, Affleck landed his first professional acting role in a small-budget local movie. Ben appeared in the PBS children’s programs “Voyage of the Mimi” and “Second Voyage of the Mimi” from the ages of 8 to 15, working both in Cambridge and in Mexico. At the ages of 14 and 15, he then had appearances in the television movies “Hands of a Stranger” and the ABC after-school special “Wanted: A Perfect Guy.”
Ben played supporting roles in many films after graduating from Cambridge Rindge and Latin School in 1990, including Daddy (1991), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992), and School Ties (1992). His bulk led to him frequently being portrayed as a bully or jock. In both the HBO drama “Body to Die For: The Aaron Henry Story” and the NBC series “Against the Grain,” he played a football player. Ben subsequently landed a role in the now-famous Richard Linklater movie “Dazed and Confused” as a high school bully. He also appeared in the 1995 drama “School Ties” in a supporting capacity.
Together with his close buddy Matt Damon, Affleck co-wrote and starred in the movie “Good Will Hunting,” which served as his career-launching vehicle for him. The script was originally a 40-page project for Damon’s Harvard University playwriting class; subsequently, when the two were living together in Los Angeles, they collaborated to extend it into a screenplay. They both desired to collaborate on a project where they could make the major decisions because they were both dissatisfied with the minor supporting and background roles they had been given up to that time.
The completed script was given by Affleck and Damon to their agency, who then shopped it around to other studios. In 1994, Castle Rock agreed to release it, but they were not ready to grant Ben and Matt the creative authority they demanded. The men presented the script to Miramax, where they were given more artistic latitude.
Wide-ranging praise from critics for the storyline and acting followed the 1997 publication of “Good Will Hunting.” Due to their outstanding performances in the film, Affleck and Damon became overnight celebrities and were immediately cast in larger roles.
As A Growing Star
Following the success of “Good Will Hunting,” Affleck was in a position to select parts that were more significant and rewarding. In “Armageddon,” one of his earliest notable achievements, he portrayed a blue-collar guy who was sent into space to prevent an asteroid from striking Earth. Ben’s reputation as a rising leading man was solidified by the film’s box office triumph.
Shakespeare in Love, Pearl Harbor, The Sum of All Fears, and Changing Lanes were among the sequels that were similarly popular. However, they weren’t all hits; a few of Affleck’s films received dismal box office results. One such flop was the 2003 film “Daredevil,” which the actor later claimed was the only one he regretted producing.
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Personal Life
Several prominent Hollywood figures have been romantically associated with Ben Affleck. From 2002 to 2004, he notably dated Jennifer Lopez, turning her into an overnight sensation in the tabloids. The media was obsessed with “Bennifer,” and photographers trailed the couple everywhere. While both Ben and Jennifer had previously appeared in tabloids, Ben was less accustomed to the continual attention and scrutiny. The increased media attention caused Affleck and Lopez to postpone their 2003 wedding after becoming engaged in 2002. The next year, they split up.
In 2005, Ben wed Jennifer Garner, and the two later had three kids together. Their divorce was finally formalized in late 2018 after they declared their separation in 2015.
Ben received alcoholism treatment in a residential facility in 2001. In 2017 and again in 2018, he came back. After a year of sobriety, he had a public slip-up in 2019, but he determined not to let it stop him from making progress.
