Jennifer Lopez is seemingly always busy, juggling her acting and music career all at once. Her work ethic has paid off big time over the years. But despite Lopez’s accomplishments, an insider claimed Affleck felt his ex-wife was capable of much more.
Ben Affleck Allegedly Felt That Jennifer Lopez Needed to Change Her Career Plans
If anyone knows what a career overhaul takes, it’s Affleck. Although his career was off to a good start after Good Will Hunting, his stock plummeted quickly in the mid-2000s. Doing a long stretch of under-performing films, in addition to his controversial relationship with Lopez at the time, drove Affleck away from Hollywood.
This hiatus was needed, however, as it inspired Affleck to reboot his career. He returned by acting in features like Hollywoodland and directing Gone Baby Gone, intentionally focusing on much more meaningful projects.
If one source is to be believed, however, it seems that Affleck might want Lopez to go down a similar path.
“Ben feels Jen needs to overhaul her career and have a better team behind her,” an insider once told The Sun. “He has butted heads with some members for a while now and it’s caused tension behind the scenes.”
Allegedly, Affleck wasn’t impressed by the projects she was picking despite her work ethic. But the source clarified that Affleck’s attitude was from a place of love and respect.
“He just wants what’s best for her and feels she’s doing a lot of mediocre projects and is surrounded by yes people who are also sometimes making decisions for her,” they said.
But the source also theorized their ideals in life were simply clashing.
“Jen is also often doing 50 things at once,” they said. “Ben is not working as much by choice and she’s overworking – so their priorities are different.”
Ben Affleck was reportedly the driving force behind Jennifer Lopez’s latest project
What might throw a wrench in these rumors is the fact that Affleck has been involved in a few of Lopez’s projects prior to their divorce. Affleck and his best friend Matt Damon produced the movie Unstoppable, which Lopez starred in. Additionally, The Town star also helped Lopez when she was filming Atlas. Lopez’s Atlas co-star Sterling K. Brown explained how Affleck would read lines from the movie with his ex-wife.
“Every once in a while, Ben would read the lines for Smith,” Brown told Entertainment Weekly. “And I think the newlyweds, still very much in love, I think she just wanted to hear his voice. And so sometimes, the reactions that you got from her were because she was listening to her husband’s voice.”
Affleck reportedly had a huge hand in getting Lopez’s latest project, This Is Me Now… , made. The documentary offered curious fans a behind-the-scenes look at Lopez’s life. The feature also coincided with the ninth studio album she released earlier this year of the same name.
Despite Affleck valuing privacy in his life, he didn’t mind Lopez releasing such a transparent and personal project. According to People, he might’ve even pushed for it.
“[Affleck] was very much in favor [of the project], and he was a driving force for [Lopez] to do the movie and the album and then he insisted on the documentary, where it looked like he was hesitant and almost surprised by it,” the source said. “But that was a false narrative.”
“The documentary was Ben’s idea for his company, Artists Equity. Jennifer’s team didn’t want to do it since she was focused on the album and Amazon original video project,” another source weighed in.
