In a new interview this week, the Hollywood star Ben Affleck revealed how his 2018 divorce from Jennifer Garner made him a better actor.

Affleck said this during an interview promoting his new movie The Way Back.

“For me the movie was much more about the fact that — whether it’s having lived enough years having seen enough ups and downs having had children and divorce having experienced a lot of different things — I’m at a point now in my life where I have sufficient life experience to bring to a role to make it really interesting for me. I’m not good enough to just invent it from whole cloth, you know?” Affleck admitted to The Hollywood Reporter.

Affleck added that these personal experience also made him like acting even more.

“Growing older and having had more intense and meaningful personal experiences has made acting much more interesting for me and in turn made me drawn to the kinds of movies that are about people who are flawed,” he said. “I didn’t have to do research for the alcoholism aspect of the movie — that was covered.”

Affleck also confessed that it was not his decision to get divorced.

“I didn’t want to get divorced, I didn’t want to be a divorced person, I really didn’t want to be a split family with my children,” he explained. “It upset me because it meant I wasn’t who I thought I was and that was so painful and so disappointing. In myself.”

Affleck and Garner have stayed friendly since their divorce, and a source told Entertainment Tonight earlier this month that she has been supportive of him in the wake of his recent split with actress Ana de Armas.

“Ben is happy, healthy and doing great since his breakup with Ana,” the source said. “Ben’s friends and Jen Garner are supportive of him moving on. Those close to Ben thought the relationship wasn’t working for either of them anymore. For now, he’s taking care of himself and focused on his kids.”

Last year, Affleck told The New York Times that “The biggest regret of my life is this divorce.”

“Shame is really toxic,” he said. “There is no positive byproduct of shame. It’s just stewing in a toxic, hideous feeling of low self-worth and self-loathing.”

“I drank relatively normally for a long time,” Affleck added. “What happened was that I started drinking more and more when my marriage was falling apart. This was 2015, 2016. My drinking, of course, created more marital problems.”