--- description: The stars made every effort to appear as boring as possible—not that it quelled the endless tabloid scrutiny title: Ben Affleck Jennifer Garner Divorce: What Their Split Says image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta66a0a3abac84513/69869847169ab051d4279f9c/4765879291.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Entertainment](/section/entertainment/) ## Entertainment Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close * [celebrities](/tag/celebrities/) ## celebrities Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner's Divorce Is the End of an Era for Celebrity News  by [Daniel D'Addario](/author/daniel-daddario/)  ## Daniel D'Addario Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Jun 30, 2015 10:22 PM CUT  Actors Ben Affleck and wife Jennifer Garner arrive at the 2014 Vanity Fair Oscar Party Hosted By Graydon Carter on March 2, 2014 in West Hollywood, Calif. Actors Ben Affleck and wife Jennifer Garner arrive at the 2014 Vanity Fair Oscar Party Hosted By Graydon Carter on March 2, 2014 in West Hollywood, Calif.C Flanigan—Getty Images  by [Daniel D'Addario](/author/daniel-daddario/)  ## Daniel D'Addario Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Jun 30, 2015 10:22 PM CUT Over the (almost exactly) ten years of their marriage, Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck, who announced their divorce Tuesday, found themselves in the press a great deal. This is generally good news for people who make their incomes off of their relationships with their fans, but for the _Dallas Buyers Club_ actress and the _Argo_ director, every bit of good news came with a nasty twist. When Affleck won the Best Picture Oscar in 2013, [his speech](https://youtu.be/FtLKn5Y1ulc "undefined") kicked off a [lengthy news cycle](http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/gossip/jennifer-garner-explains-ben-affleck-oscar-acceptance-speech-article-1.1307567 "undefined") over what, exactly, he’d meant when he told Garner that their marriage was “work, but the best kind of work.” And endless paparazzi photos of the growing Garner-Affleck family on family outings around the Los Angeles area gave rise to suspicion, online, that the image the two performers was projecting was meant to cover for discontent. The Garner-Affleck storyline, in the celebrity press, was one that proved no matter how hard celebrities try to be boring—no matter how close to 100 percent of their time they spent on couples’ trips to Starbucks—celebrities will always exist as templates onto which we can project our darker impulses. The tone of coverage around the stars was, by and large, both suspicious and derisive, willing both to chase down rumors (unsurprising) and to impute at all times the worst possible motives to both partners (surprising, a little). This continued while the couple projected little but either vague positivity or an earnest interest in becoming better partners. Of course, the image a star projects is just that. And those who suspected that Garner and Affleck were headed for divorce, were proven right, eventually. But the obsessively analytical tone of the coverage the pair was met with was strange in its tone. When, a decade prior, Affleck broke up with Jennifer Lopez, it came at the end of similar public obsession, but Affleck and Lopez made a music video together and made a point of flaunting their rather lavish shared lifestyle. The story of Garner and Affleck’s impending divorce was one told both through anonymous sources (which is par for the course) and through the careful parsing of every trip to Starbucks. The latter aspect, the degree to which the celebrity press was determined to make the “separate lives” narrative work largely on the basis of projection, made it, more than anything, the worst sort of thing a celebrity-gossip story can be: Boring. Really, who cares as much about Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner as the American public has been made to care over the course of the very long breakup narrative? He’s a reasonably talented, vastly decorated actor-director who’s funny on _Morning Joe_; she’s a movie actor whose most productive years are definitively behind her. They both seem like perfectly nice people. When, last summer, Beyoncé and Jay Z’s concert tour was the site of a long-running rumor that the pair was about to divorce, with every song choice examined and every declaration of love split finely, that made sense. The divorce of music’s two biggest stars would send shockwaves throughout the industry. The divorce of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner matters, in a meaningful sense, only to the Garner-Affleck family and those who are close to them. That’s why a conclusive end to the ongoing hyper-focus on how they look at the farmers’ market isn’t unwelcome. But that same close attention to their lives over the past decade is no longer surprising. Now, they’re one of many seemingly boring celebrity couples who are subject to the scrutiny that used to be reserved for the exceptional. ### See the Most Memorable On-Screen Couples  Peter and Ellie - It Happened One Night, 1934 Columbia Pictures/Getty Images  Scarlett and Rhett - Gone With The Wind, 1939 Silver Screen Collection/Archive Photos/Getty Images  Walter Burns and Hildy Johnson - His Girl Friday, 1940 Columbia Pictures/Getty Images  Rich Blaine and Isla Lund - Casablanca, 1942 Popperfoto/Getty Images  Ricky and Lucy - I Love Lucy, 1951 Archive Photos/Getty Images  Don Lockwood and Kathy Seldon- Singin' in the Rain, 1952 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/Getty Images  Tony and Maria - West Side Story, 1961 United Artists/Getty Images  Holly Golightly and Paul - Breakfast at Tiffany's, 1961 Movie Poster Image Art/Getty Images  Bonnie and Clyde - Bonnie and Clyde, 1967 Fotos International/Getty Images  Katie and Hubbell - The Way We Were, 1973 Columbia/Getty Images  Danny Zuko and Sandy Olsen - Grease, 1978 Paramount Pictures/Fotos International/Getty Images  Han Solo and Leia Organa - The Empire Strikes Back, 1980 Lucasfilm  Sam and Diane - Cheers, 1982 NBC/Getty Images  Frances 'Baby' Houseman and Johnny Castle - Dirty Dancing, 1987 Vestron/Getty Images  Wesley and Princess Buttercup - The Princess Bride, 1987 20th Century Fox  Harry Burns and Sally Albright - When Harry Met Sally, 1989 Hulton Archive/Getty Images  Vivian and Edward - Pretty Woman, 1990 Buena Vista/Getty Images  Beauty and the Beast - Beauty and the Beast, 1991 Disney  Cory and Topanga - Boy Meets World, 1993 SGranitz—WireImage/Getty Images  Jenny Curran and Forrest Gump - Forrest Gump, 1994 Paramount Pictures  Ross and Rachel - Friends, 1994 NBC/Getty Images  Doug and Carol - E.R., 1994 NBC/Getty Images  Jack and Rose - Titanic, 1997 20th Century Fox/Getty Images  Buffy and Angel - Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 1997 Getty Images  Carrie and Big - Sex and the City, 1998 HBO/Getty Images  Patrick Verona and Kat Stratford - 10 Things I Hate About You, 1999 Buena Vista/Getty Images  Noah and Allie - The Notebook, 2004 New Line Cinema  Jack and Ennis - Brokeback Mountain, 2005 Focus Films  Tom and Summer - (500) Days of Summer, 2009 Fox Searchlight  Carl and Ellie - Up, 2009 Pixar/Disney ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3942291/ben-affleck-jennifer-garner-divorce-why/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3942291/ben-affleck-jennifer-garner-divorce-why/"},"headline":"Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner's Divorce Is the End of an Era for Celebrity News","datePublished":"2015-06-30T22:22:30.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T05:02:42.186Z","description":"The stars made every effort to appear as boring as possible—not that it quelled the endless tabloid scrutiny","url":"https://time.com/3942291/ben-affleck-jennifer-garner-divorce-why/","keywords":["celebrities","movies","Ben Affleck","Jennifer garner"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta66a0a3abac84513/69869847169ab051d4279f9c/4765879291.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Daniel D'Addario","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/daniel-daddario/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta66a0a3abac84513/69869847169ab051d4279f9c/4765879291.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Ben Affleck Jennifer Garner","caption":"Ben Affleck Jennifer Garner","creditText":"C Flanigan—Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/celebrities/","name":"celebrities"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3942291/ben-affleck-jennifer-garner-divorce-why/","name":"Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner's Divorce Is the End of an Era for Celebrity News"}}]}] ```