Ben Affleck he doesn’t want his children to follow in his footsteps.
“You put something on your kids when you have a public life, and that’s complicated,” Affleck, 53, said. And! news in an interview published on Wednesday, January 14, while talking about his three children with his ex-wife Jennifer Garner. “We really want to give them space to figure out what they want to do.”
Affleck, who shares violet20, Seraphina, 17, and Samuel, 13, with Garner, 53, said they would never “push” their children to become actors like their famous parents.
“They’re brilliant and charming and wonderful and we love them and we’re proud of them,” he concluded before joking, “And (hopefully) they don’t lose their lives acting.”
Fun parenthood! Over the years, Ben Affleck has given rare glimpses of his bond with his three children and those of Jennifer Garner. The actor became a father for the first time in December 2005 when he and the Alias alum welcomed daughter Violet, six months after tying the knot in France. The couple then welcomed daughter Seraphina (…)
While Samuel and Seraphina have largely stayed out of the public eye, Violet has been using her voice for activism since he was young. When Affleck and Garner’s oldest daughter was in kindergarten, she fought for her own privacy and participated in a 2013 bill limiting paparazzi from taking pictures of children.
“Violet is hyper-articulate – she’s Ben Affleck’s daughter, she stood up in a chair in a velvet dress, with her hair pulled back and her glasses on and she didn’t say her R was right, and she said, ‘We didn’t ask for this. We don’t want those cameras, they’re scary. Men are scary when they scare each other. you’re being stalked,’” Garner recalled in a 2021 interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
Violet, who is now a student at Yale University, has also attended White House state dinners and United Nations assemblies to advocate for clean air and mask mandates in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I contracted a post-viral condition in 2019,” Violet said during a 2024 Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors meeting. “I’m fine now, but I saw firsthand that medicine doesn’t always have answers to the consequences of even minor viruses. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted that.”
Later, while addressing the United Nations General Assembly in September 2025, Violet argued: “We can recognize filtered air as a human right, as intuitively as we do filtered water. We can create a clean air infrastructure that is so ubiquitous and so obviously necessary, that the children of tomorrow won’t even know why we need it.”
Jennifer Garner has a special bond with daughter Violet Affleck. Garner became a mother for the first time in 2005 when she and ex-husband Ben Affleck welcomed Violet. (The exes also share children Seraphina and Sameul who were born in 2009 and 2012, respectively.) “My eldest daughter (Violet) didn’t have any traits. She couldn’t have (…)
Violet’s parents couldn’t be more proud of her for fighting for what she believes in.
“It’s exciting,” Garner said of Violet starting college during an appearance in 2023 He lives with Kelly and Mark. “I can see the stress, even though excitement and stress go hand in hand. But she handles it like a champ and is totally on top of it. I don’t have to say, ‘You’re doing this, you’re doing that?’ She is a self-starter. And I’m proud of her no matter what.”
Meanwhile, Affleck said Access Hollywood of Violet in 2025, “She take his mother. She is spectacular. And I’m very lucky to have had a great partner and to have great children. It’s the joy of my life, and I’m very, very lucky. It makes me happy every day.”