Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck may have only been married a few years, but their romance spans decades.
From 2002 to 2004, Jen and Ben were engaged after meeting on the set of their movie Gigli.
As you might know, Gigli was a total flop. After its release in 2003, the film was described as one of the “worst” movies of the century so far — and it’s only aged more poorly as time has passed.
But, for better or worse, Gigli remains a major part of pop culture history thanks to the fact that it was the movie that sparked Ben and J.Lo’s decades-spanning love story.
In a recent interview with Variety, Jen reflected on her first-ever meeting with her now-husband at an early table read for Gigli.
“They did a read through of the whole thing and I remember just walking in,” the singer recalled. “I think he was outside smoking a cigarette, and I saw him and we just talked for a minute and I sat down and we did the read through.”
“I don’t remember a whole bunch more about it,” she added, “but I remember being on the set with him every day and loving it.”
At the time of their first interaction in 2002, Jennifer was still married to her second husband, Cris Judd. She filed to divorce Cris that year, and by July, she and Ben had made their relationship public.
Ben proposed to Jen in November 2002, although they eventually called off their first wedding in 2004 — later saying that the excessive media attention "destroyed" their relationship.
Despite the chaos that followed Gigli, Ben has previously opened up about falling for his now-wife while shooting the movie, describing the whole experience as a “perfect storm.”
“It's just that it became a story in and of itself,” he said in 2022, admitting that he thought the poorly received film would end his career.
“It engendered a lot of negative feelings in people about me,” he recalled. “There's that aspect of people that I got to see that was sad and hard, it was depressing and really made me question things and feel disappointed and have a lot of self-doubt.”
Despite the backlash, he expressed how grateful he was that the movie led him toward the two loves of his life: J.Lo and directing.
“If the reaction to Gigli hadn't happened, I probably wouldn't have ultimately decided, ‘I don't really have any other avenue but to direct movies,’ which has turned out to be the real love of my professional life,” he said. “And I did get to meet Jennifer, the relationship with whom has been really meaningful to me in my life.”
