Sophia Michaels
So, Affleck was able to get a break for a little while, but eventually Paltrow’s family caught up to him and found out that he was much more complicated than he seemed. Affleck was capable of much more, but he didn’t take the time to explore his potential.
After splitting from Brad Pitt, Gwyneth Paltrow found love on the set of her next movie, “Shakespeare in Love,” which helped her snag an Academy Award as well as a boyfriend. At the time, Ben Affleck was an up-and-coming star who Paltrow encouraged to take more serious and challenging roles. “He’s capable of so much more,” she insisted to The New York Times in 2000, referencing some of his then-recent film credits like “Pearl Harbor” or “Armageddon” as examples of roles that failed to challenge him as an actor.
To the outside world, Paltrow and the Boston native, who was known for his drinking and gambling, made an unlikely couple. “The germ grass and meditation … that is not my thing,” Affleck joked to the Mirror a year later, following their breakup. “[She] is much more evolved than I am. She is closer to inner peace, whereas I have a very difficult time sitting still.”
And Paltrow’s parents weren’t over the moon about this new boyfriend, as she later shared on “The Howard Stern Show.” “I think they appreciated how he’s super intelligent and he’s really, really talented and he’s funny, but he wasn’t in a good place in his life to have a girlfriend,” she admitted. Admittedly, her family also never warmed to Affleck as they had with Pitt. “I think they were okay … with us not being [together],” she said.
