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18 Jan 2026 11:52
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  •   Home > News > Entertainment

    Ben Affleck wants his children to follow their own passions in life

    The 53-year-old star - who has Violet, 20, Seraphina, 17, or Samuel, 13, with his ex-wife Jennifer Garner - has insisted he won't push his kids towards careers in the film industry.


    Ben - who was married to Jennifer Garner between 2005 and 2018 - told E! News: "You put something on your children when you have a public life and that's complicated. We really want to give them room to figure out what they want to do.

    "I wouldn't push them into that. They're brilliant and lovely and wonderful and we love them and we're proud of them, and hope that they don't waste their life acting."

    Ben didn't grow up with the same level of privilege as his children - but he actually thinks that it's helped him in the long run.

    The actor said: "In some way, it was kind of a blessing to anonymity, to struggle, to where we started, which was just in the middle of nowhere."

    Meanwhile, Ben previously claimed that movies will be "one of the last things" to be replaced by AI.

    The actor believes AI technology can replicate the "more laborious, less creative" aspects of filmmaking - but Ben insists he isn't worried about AI taking over Hollywood.

    Speaking at CNBC's Delivering Alpha 2024 investor summit, Ben explained: "AI can write you excellent imitative verse that sounds Elizabethan. It cannot write you Shakespeare.

    "The function of having two actors or three or four actors in a room and the taste to discern and construct ... that is something that currently entirely alludes AI's capability and I think will for a meaningful period of time.

    "What AI is going to do is dis-intermediate the more laborious, less creative, and more costly aspects of filmmaking that will allow costs to be brought down, that will lower the barrier to entry, that will allow more voices to be heard, that will make it easier for the people want to make Good Will Huntings to go out and make it."

    © 2026 Bang Showbiz, NZCity

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