Ben Affleck says his portrayal in the media has made him concerned about his kids’ worrying about his mental health. Affleck discussed his mental health struggles in a new interview with the Los Angeles Times.
Affleck explains that he had difficulty dealing with his media image during the early 2000s, but later learned to overcome the anxiety by going to therapy; however, he says once his kids grew older, things became difficult again.
“I got to a place where [the public perception] was so different from who I am that I just stopped reading and stopped caring. But then, as my kids got older and started seeing the Internet themselves, that’s the difficult part.”
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Affleck says that the popular “Sad Affleck” meme, despite being funny, is something he found concerning.
“Even the ‘Sad Affleck’ meme – that was funny to me,” he recalled. “I mean, there’s nobody who hasn’t felt that way at a junket. But then my kids see it and I think, ‘Oh, are they going to think their dad is fundamentally sad or they have to worry about me?’ That’s really tough.”
Affleck has three children, Violet Anne, 16, and Seraphina Rose, 13, and Samuel Garner, 9.
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