Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez‘s marriage may be broken up but their family’s bond remains strong.
At the premiere of his latest film The Accountant 2, the actor revealed that his ex’s twins Max and Emme, 17, were in attendance, along with his own. Ben—who shares children Violet, 19, Serafina, 16, and Samuel, 13, with first ex-wife Jennifer Garner—then gave a rare shoutout to the “I’m Real” singer.
“Kids are here, Jen’s kids are here,” Ben told Entertainment Tonight at the April 16 event. “For the record, Jennifer Lopez is spectacular, great to my kids, great ongoing relationship with them. I love her kids. They’re wonderful. She’s [an] enormously important, tremendous person of a lot of integrity who I adore and am grateful to.”
The 52-year-old said he was “thrilled” that the kids were there. “Those relationships that you could have with children like that, it’s the joy of my life,” he said. “Those kids are amazing and I’m glad that this is a movie they want to come to.”
“He watched it and was like, ‘Dad, I think it might be my favorite movie of yours,’” Ben told E! News’ Will Marfuggi. “That was high praise which doesn’t come easy from your kids.”
Steve Granitz / FilmMagic / Jamie McCarthy / Getty Images
Ben’s family outing with Samuel, Max and Emme, who were not photographed on the red carpet, comes three months after he and J.Lo reached a divorce settlement.
The Oscar winner had last month shared rare insight into the end of the former couple’s two-year marriage, noting that there was “no scandal, no soap opera, no intrigue” about their split.
“The truth is, when you talk to somebody, ‘Hey, what happened?’ Well, there is no: ‘This is what happened,’” he told GQ in an interview published March 25. “It’s just a story about people trying to figure out their lives and relationships in ways that we all sort of normally do.”
He continued, “It sounds more like a couple’s therapy session, which—you would tune out of someone else’s couple’s therapy after a while. For one thing, you start going, ‘Okay, clearly this person has got these issues. Clearly they have these issues.’ And the reason I don’t want to share that is just sort of embarrassing. It feels vulnerable.”
Look back at Ben and Jennifer’s relationship…
December 2002: Red Carpet Debut
The two make their red carpet debut as a couple at the premiere of her film Maid in Manhattan.
