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Ben Affleck may earn eight-figure salaries for the movies he stars in, but he doesn’t make a habit of sharing that wealth with his kids.
Affleck, who co-parents three teenagers — Violet Anne, 19, Seraphina Rose, 16, and Samuel, 13 — with his ex-wife, Jennifer Garner, recently went viral when he showed up at a sneaker convention with his son.
In a video from the event shared by the popular Instagram account Got Sole, Affleck refused to buy a $6,000 pair of Dior Air Jordan 1s that Samuel had his eye on. “That’s a lot of lawns you gotta mow there,” the actor quipped.
During a Tuesday appearance on NBC’s morning show “Jenna & Friends,” guest co-host Andy Cohen told Affleck he admired his just-say-no strategy.
“He was like, ‘We have the money,'” Affleck recalled his son saying. “I was like, ‘I have the money. You’re broke.'”
“Listen, you love your kids,” Affleck continued. “You want to give them everything and do everything for them. But I think you definitely do them a disservice by not connecting — you want something meaningful, that you want? You have to work for that.”
Affleck confirmed that his two eldest kids have already entered the workforce. Seraphina recently landed a “classic teenager” job in a shop, while Violet is juggling college schoolwork with a part-time job and the search for a summer internship.
“My son is 13. He’s reckoning with that reality right now as he’s looking at no shoes in his closet, thinking about — well, he’s got shoes, just no, like, crazy expensive fancy shoes,” Affleck explained. “I’m like, ‘Well, if you want that, you can work 1,000 hours.’ You know what I mean? Minimum wage.”
Before becoming an in-demand Hollywood star, Affleck was raised in a working-class family in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He spent his teenage years auditioning for after-school specials and acting in high-school theater productions with his longtime friend, Matt Damon.
Affleck and Damon famously split a $600,000 check for writing “Good Will Hunting,” their breakthrough film, which won best original screenplay at the 1998 Oscars. Over the years, Affleck built up to earning eight-figure paydays with memorable roles in blockbuster films, including his turn as Batman in multiple DC Comics movies.
In 2020, Forbes estimated Affleck’s net worth to be $55 million.
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