Jennifer Lopez said she had a “tough time” after her divorce from Ben Affleck, but it ultimately led to personal growth.
Speaking with Lee Cowan on the Sept. 28 broadcast of CBS News Sunday Morning, the actor and singer described the separation as pivotal.
“It changed me,” Lopez, 56, said. “It helped me grow in a way that I needed to grow.”
She called the divorce “the best thing that ever happened to me.”
The former couple finalized their divorce in January, the same month Lopez’s film “Kiss of the Spider Woman” debuted at the Sundance Film Festival. Affleck, 53, served as an executive producer on the project.
Lopez said she experienced conflicting emotions while working on the film amid personal difficulties.
“It was a really tough time,” she said. “Every moment on set, every moment I was doing this role, I was so happy, and then it was like, back home, it was not great.
“And it was just like, oh, you know, How do I reconcile this?”
Lopez addressed the divorce in greater detail during a conversation with comedian Nikki Glaser for Interview Magazine in 2024. She acknowledged the toll the breakup took on her, while stressing she did not regret it.
“That doesn’t mean it didn’t almost take me out for good,” she said. “It almost did. But now, on the other side of it, I think to myself, [expletive], that is exactly what I needed. Thank you, God. I’m sorry it took me so long. I’m sorry that you had to do this to me so many times. I should have learned it two or three times ago. I get it. You had to hit me really hard over the head with a [expletive] sledgehammer. You dropped the house on me. Don’t have to do it again.”
Lopez and Affleck first began dating in 2002 and were briefly engaged before ending the relationship in 2004. The two reunited in 2021 and married in Las Vegas in July 2022, later holding a larger ceremony in Georgia. Two years later, Lopez filed for divorce citing irreconcilable differences.
Lopez said she considered the breakup less of an ending and more of a turning point.
“That doesn’t mean I have everything figured out,” she told Glaser. “But I finally got it.”
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