Funny on so many levels

IMDb had this item in their latest news section today:

Affleck: “Lopez Relationship Damaged My Career”

Dating Jennifer Lopez was bad for Ben Affleck‘s career, according to the Hollywood star himself. Affleck and Lopez’s romance hit the headlines between 2002 and 2004, and the couple was engaged when they split. Both blamed excessive tabloid coverage for the separation. And Affleck, who now has a daughter with wife Jennifer Garner, believes the unwanted media attention surrounding his romance with Lopez resulted in studio executives taking him less seriously in Hollywood. He tells American magazine Details, “It was probably bad for my career. What happens is this sort of bleeds over from the tabloids across your movie work. You go to a movie, you only go once. But the tabloids and internet are everywhere. You can really subsume the public image of somebody. I ended up in an unfortunate crosshair position where I was in a relationship and (the media) mostly lied and inflated a bunch of salacious stuff for the sake of selling magazines. And I paid a certain price for that.”

This just works on so many levels. I mean, I think Ben Affleck is a funny guy, but what about him was so respectable before J.Lo? Yes, some of his most awful films were during the J.Lo period (Gigli anyone?) but even before that he did Pearl Harbor and Phantoms.

Also, I love that he acts like he had nothing to do with the tabloid sensation during the Bennifer days. He makes it sound like J.Lo had a swarm of paparazzi following her every move and he was just a wide-eyed kid who got swept up in it all. Dude, you were famous too! Paparazzi followed you before, remember when you were dating Gwyneth and we never heard the end of it?

Anyway, I just loved that little story and I had to post it here.