Yes, Ben Affleck Speaks Spanish – These Videos Show Him Flexing His Fluency on Camera
Ben Affleck is one of the most successful actors in Hollywood, but fans don’t just love him for his movies. Following a string of successful roles, intermixed with a handful of duds and some of the most highly publicized relationships in entertainment, Affleck’s appeal is something that radiates beyond the silver screen.
For starters, he’s undeniably one of the most meme’d actors in history (the pictures of him smoking cigarettes outside his house are all-timers), but in a way that feels more affectionate than mean-spirited. His fans are constantly worried about his mental state and his on-again, off-again relationship with Jennifer Lopez was treated like a season of “The Bachelor” that lasted for two decades. Spoiler alert: it has a happy ending.
Among his most ardent supporters, some may be unaware that Affleck speaks fluent Spanish. Even more surprising is the fact that it has nothing to do with Lopez. Well, maybe not nothing, but that isn’t the main reason.
In fact, Affleck has been speaking Spanish since he was a child after learning the language while filming a TV show in Mexico. The project is, presumably, an episode of “ABC Afterschool Special” called “Wanted: The Perfect Guy,” which Affleck starred in when he was 13.
Since then, Affleck has had the ability to speak Spanish pretty fluently, but admitted that he had begun to lose it until a member of his own family forced him to take his bilingual game up a notch. Of all people, it was Affleck’s oldest daughter, Violet, who made him realize he needed to brush up, reports People.
During an appearance on “The Kelly Clarkson Show,” the host asked if he did, in fact, speak Spanish fluently. Humbly, the actor responded that he spoke it more “passively” than anything else, but jokingly added that he didn’t want his daughter, who was taking Spanish in school, to become a better speaker than him.
“She’s always been a very good student, and she’s been interested in Spanish, and so I would often help her,” he told Clarkson. “Now, all of a sudden, she’s gotten into the grade where she’s, like, in the harder Spanish classes and she’s getting better.”
He admitted that his daughter Violet was approaching a point where her Spanish was better than her dad’s, to which Affleck said, “Nope! This is not happening!” He added, “I don’t mind that I can’t do your math homework when you’re 14 years old, but you are not going to be better at Spanish than me. So I’ve decided now I gotta take classes; I gotta do something to keep up.”
So, without further ado, here are a few times when Ben Affleck busted out his Spanish in interviews throughout the years:
