It was Jennifer Lopez’s fourth marriage and Ben Affleck’s second but it seemed that the power couple couldn’t make it work on their second attempt.
ADVERTISEMENTAfter a relationship that spanned two decades, two engagements, two weddings and headlines too numerous to count, Lopez has filed for divorce from Affleck.
Lopez’s filing at the Los Angeles Superior Court puts the date of separation as 26 April 2024.
The musician and filmmaker’s relationship had been at the forefront of gossip columns when they rekindled in 2021. The pair had first struck up a relationship in 2001 on the set of the film Gigli and fell in love.
Dubbed “Bennifer” by the press – a trend that would be copied with other couples like Brangelina – the high-profile couple couldn’t make it last and parted ways in 2004, announcing that they’d called off their engagement, in part, due to the “excessive media attention”.
When Bennifer got back together in 2021, some saw it as a sign that true love was possible. The pair had always spoken highly of each other following their separation. By April 2022 they were engaged once more.
“Love is beautiful. Love is kind. And it turns out love is patient. 20 years patient,” wrote Lopez, announcing their first, quickie Las Vegas wedding that July, and signing off as Jennifer Lynn Affleck.
“Stick around long enough and maybe you’ll find the best moment of your life in a drive through in Las Vegas at 12:30 in the morning in the tunnel of love drive-through with your kids and the one you’ll spend forever with,” she wrote in her newsletter.
The couple had flown to Las Vegas, lined up with their licence with four other couples and were wed just after midnight at A Little White Wedding Chapel, where Lopez said a Bluetooth speaker played their brief march down the aisle. She called it the best night of the couple’s lives.
A month later, they had a much grander wedding at Affleck’s house in Georgia, in front of friends and family.
Both of them had been previously married. Affleck, 52, married Jennifer Garner, with whom he shares three children, in 2005. They divorced in 2018.
Lopez, 55, had been married three times before. She was briefly married to Ojani Noa from 1997-1998 and to Cris Judd from 2001-2003. She and singer Marc Anthony were married for a decade, having wed in 2004, and share 14-year-old twins. She started dating former baseball player Alex Rodriguez in 2017, but the couple called off their engagement in 2021.
Lopez is starring in the upcoming Unstoppable, under Affleck and Matt Damon's Artists Equity banner.
In May, she starred in the Netflix movie Atlas. At the end of the month, she suddenly canceled her 2024 North American tour, saying she was “heartsick and devastated” to be letting fans down but the move was necessary. “Jennifer is taking time off to be with her children, family and close friends,” organisers said in a statement.
The tour was to be her first in five years, in support of her first solo album in a decade, This Is Me.... Now and its companion film, a fictionalised look at her long love life, and a documentary.
The album, she said, was inspired by her rekindled relationship with Affleck. But the film was more “about your journey as a person, it’s about one person’s journey and what it takes to get from heartbreak back to love. Or a hopeless romantic’s journey in their search for love.” In the movie, she played a character called The Artist who, similarly, had decided as a child what she wanted to be when she grew up: “in love.”
