Argos Ben Affleck Turned To Directing After Relationship With Jennifer Lopez 'Ruined' His Career

In a recent interview with the Washington Post, Affleck revealed that his romance with Lopez and their 2003 bomb Gigli was so damaging to his acting career that he felt he needed to try something new.

I just thought: This is so gross. Its destructive to my career, its destructive to my soul, to my everything, I want to escape this, Affleck said. I thought, Ive been wanting to direct for so long, if theres ever going to be a moment to take two years away from acting and shoot and release [a movie], this is the time.

Affleck made similar comments in an interview with Details last month.

"In our culture, we get very much into 'short-handing' people," he said. "And I got 'shorthanded' as 'That Guy': Jennifer Lopez, movies bombed, therefore he must be a sort of thoughtless. dilettante, solipsistic consumer, blah, blah, blah.

"It's hard to shake those sorts of narratives. If you were looking at that one-liner on me in 2003, which was definitely the annus horribilis [laughs] of my life.

Its easy to see why Affleck cringes when looks back on that period.

In the days before TomKat and Robsten, Affleck and Lopez were a tabloid sensation known as Bennifer. Their romance was splattered across the pages of weekly gossip magazines and countless entertainment news segments. The actor famously presented the former Fly Girl with a $2.5 million engagement ring and quickly transformed from a scruffy Bostonite to polished Ken doll.

Lopez recorded the song Dear Ben for her album This is Me Then, and Affleck made a humiliating cameo in Lopezs Jenny from the Block music video -- in which he fondled her on a yacht. They also participated in a nauseating "Dateline"special about their life as a couple.

Affleck later said he regretted the interview.

"That ["Dateline"] special was before the movie ["Gigli"] came out, and I did it at the request of the people who financed the movie. I wish I hadn't," he told WENN in 2009. "At a certain point I think you have to strike a balance between what you owe people who finance your work and the degree to which you can protect the integrity of your personal life."

According to Screen Junkies, Gigli remains one of