Ben Affleck reveals he still talks to Jennifer Lopez 16 years after they split: 'She's the real thing'

Sixteen years after the celebrity couple split, Ben Affleck, 47, says he and his ex-fiancee, Jennifer Lopez, 50, are still in touch.

In an interview with Brooks Barnes, the Hollywood reporter for the New York Times, Affleck spoke about Lopez. Barnes took to Twitter to share some of the quotes that didn't make it into the final story published on Tuesday, February 18.

The tweet read, "On past flame Jennifer Lopez ... 'She should have been nominated. She's the real thing. I keep in touch periodically with her and have a lot of respect for her. How awesome is it that she had her biggest hit movie at 50? That's f**king baller.'" Affleck was referring to Lopez's 2019 film, 'Hustlers'.

The duo had met and began dating in 2003 while they were filming 'Gigli.' After getting engaged, they called it off in 2004. Lopez had talked about their relationship in an interview with Vanity Fair in December 2017. She said that it "self-destructed in front of the entire world.”

Lopez then married Marc Anthony in June of 2004 and the couple became parents to twins Max and Emme, who are now 12. The couple split in 2012 and Lopez got engaged to Alex Rodriquez in March 2019.

Affleck married Jennifer Garner in June 2005 and the couple shares three children together: Violet, 14, Seraphina, 11, and Samuel, 7. After being married for almost a decade, the couple finalized their divorce in October 2018. They had split earlier in 2015.

Affleck also spoke about Garner during the Barnes interview, saying, "The first and main thing that I have to say to Jennifer Garner in public or in private is thank you. I want to be really clear about how much I respect her and how much I value the fact that she works with me in co-parenting."

“I drank relatively normally for a long time. What happened was that I started drinking more and more when my marriage was falling apart. This was 2015, 2016. My drinking, of course, created more marital problems," he continued. Affleck admitted that the split with Garner was his "biggest regret."

Garner had been there for him through his troubles, even as he completed his third stay in rehab in October 2018. Affleck also discussed the end of his marriage on February 20, with Diane Sawyer on 'Good Morning America.'

“I never thought that I was gonna get divorced. I didn’t want to get divorced. I didn’t want to be a divorced person. I really didn’t want to be a split family with my children. And it upset me because it meant I wasn’t who I thought I was. And that was so painful and so disappointing in myself," Affleck said.