Bennifer 2.0: Everything that Led to Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck's Reunion
Take a look back at Bennifer's 19-year-long journey and all the details that led to the famous couple's surprising reunion and their second engagement.
Image via Getty
There would have been no KimYe, Brangelina, or TomKat without Bennifer. It’s no surprise that so many people are fascinated with Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck rekindling their romance in 2021, nearly 17 years after their split in the early 2000s. After meeting on the set of Gigli in 2001, they became one of the most talked-about celebrity couples in Hollywood history. The pair might be responsible for starring in one of the most poorly rated movies ever, but no one can deny the impact their two-year relationship had on pop culture.
Tabloids dissected every aspect of the triple-threat and the Oscar winner’s relationship, so much so that they were given their own moniker—Bennifer—which started the trend of nicknaming celebrity couples. Fans were hooked on every detail about them, from how they met, their red carpet appearances, her 6.1-carat pink diamond engagement ring, to his appearance in the “Jenny From the Block” music video to their split. While the breakup reportedly left her heartbroken, and he said he regretted parts of their relationship, the pair have openly sung each other’s praises in the media during their time apart. Now with divorces, failed relationships, and called-off engagements in their rearview, the high-profile couple is revisiting the past and giving their relationship another try. Here’s a complete timeline of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez’s 19-year-long romance and all the details that led to them finally tying the knot in 2022.
They crossed paths on the 'Gigli’ set
Date: 2001
The Bronx singer and the Boston native met on the set of the mobster comedy Gigli in 2001. The movie received plenty of media coverage before its release after Affleck and Lopez’s names were attached. At the time, she was at the top of her game after starring in movies like The Wedding Planner and Selena, and he was one of Hollywood’s top actors after winning an Oscar for Good Will Hunting and his roles in Pearl Harbor and Armageddon. The movie began filming just months after Lopez married her second husband, choreographer and dancer Cris Judd. By June 2002, rumors started circulating that their marriage was over and that she was moving on with Affleck.
Affleck publicly expresses his admiration for Lopez
Date: March 2002
Lopez was named ShoWest’s Female Star of the Year in March 2002. Directors, producers, and people in the industry bought ads to congratulate the actress on the honor. Affleck took out an ad for his then-co-star in The Hollywood Reporter, and the message was so over the top it led some to question the nature of their relationship. ‘’You have shown kindness, dedication, diligence, humility, graciousness of spirit, beauty in courage, great empathy, astonishing talent, real poise, and true grace,” the ad read. “It has been nothing but an honor and a pleasure to work with you. I only wish I were lucky enough to be in all your movies.’’ He signed it: ‘’With love, respect, and gratitude, Ben Affleck.’’ Since Lopez was still married to Judd at the time, Affleck reportedly claimed that he bought the ad to debunk the rumor that Lopez had been a “diva” and difficult on the set while filming Gigli.
Lopez splits from Judd, and Bennifer was born
When: June 2002
After rumors circulated that the co-stars were more than just friends, Lopez and Affleck were reportedly spotted kissing and cuddling at a surprise birthday party for the pop star. It was one of the first times the tabloids and the public recognized them as a couple. People reported that sources close to the couple said that the singer-actress began introducing Affleck to her friends as her boyfriend just a month after separating from Judd in June. Lopez’s lawyer told the Associated Press that the actress and Judd separated in early June 2002 and said that the split was “extremely amicable.” After eight months of marriage, J.Lo filed for divorce from husband No. 2 on July 26, 2002, after a month-long separation, citing irreconcilable differences. “Jennifer Lopez and Cris Judd have announced they have resolved all issues arising out of their marriage,” the couple’s lawyers shared in a statement at the time. The couple met while working on Lopez’s music video “Love Don’t Cost a Thing” and tied the knot in September 2001. Their divorce was finalized in January 2003.
Affleck refuted the rumors that there was any overlap between his relationship with the superstar and her marriage to Judd in a March 2003 interview with Vanity Fair. “At first, because she was married, there was no thought of a romantic relationship, so that created the opportunity to get to know each other without any of the falseness that goes with courtship because you’re trying to make a good impression,” he shared, adding that the rumors that things heated up between them while she was married were “absolutely not true” and that would go “against the fundamental code [he believes] in and [lives] by.” He added, “The very idea of hiding or misrepresenting anything I’m doing makes me really uncomfortable. And that’s not something that’s in Jennifer’s character, either. Both of us wanted to err on the side of doing the right thing.”
They quickly became tabloid favorites
Date: Aug. 5, 2002
Bennifer quickly became a high-profile couple, and the paparazzi constantly hounded them, and the tabloid wars for pics of the A-listers began. In the first week of August 2002, both People magazine and Us Weekly featured Bennifer stories on their covers. People reportedly paid $75,000 for nine photos of J.Lo and Ben riding together in a Bentley convertible, including one of them kissing. “We wanted the lip-lock photo,” a People spokeswoman said at the time. The couple later re-created this moment in one of the singer’s most iconic music videos.
Affleck stars in the “Jenny From the Block” video
Date: Nov. 5, 2002
MTV’s TRL premiered the music video for “Jenny From the Block” in November 2002, bringing even more attention to their relationship. The song was the lead single from her third studio album, This Is Me… Then, which came out on Nov. 26 of that year. The video’s premise is about them poking fun at the media invading Lopez’s personal life, mainly dissecting the intimate moments of her relationship with the actor. The video featured a now-infamous yacht scene that showed Affleck rubbing on and kissing Lopez’s famous backside. The album also featured a song Lopez wrote for her boyfriend, titled “Dear Ben,” in which she professed her love for him. “I love you, you’re perfect, a manifestation of my dreams/You make my body feel about a million different things/I think God made you for me,” Lopez sings in the track. “I write this song to let you know/That you will always be/My lust, my love, my man, my child, my friend, and my king.”
Affleck pops the question in Boston
Date: Nov. 13, 2002
The couple wasted no time, and by November, they got engaged. Just months after her separation, Affleck proposed to the actress at his mother’s house in Boston. “It’s just a blanket, a quilt of rose petals, all over the whole entire house,” Lopez said, announcing their engagement in an ABC exclusive interview with Primetime’s Diane Sawyer. “So many candles, and vases, bouquets. And my song ‘Glad’ was playing… I walk in, and I was just, like, overwhelmed. I wasn’t expecting it, and I was just like, ‘Oh my God.’” The actor said his mom had helped him plan the proposal. Affleck read Lopez a letter he had written to her stating all the reasons he loved her and wanted to marry her. “I had cried a lot over sadness over the years. And for the first time in my life, I cried incredible purging tears of happiness,” Lopez told Sawyer. “It was the most cleansing feeling and the most wonderful feeling I had ever had.” The giant pink diamond ring has since become one of the most famous engagement rings in pop culture history, sparking a trend of colorful diamonds being used as engagement rings.
Affleck’s visit to a strip club makes headlines
Date: July 17, 2003
Affleck reportedly paid a visit to a strip club in Vancouver, where he was filming Paycheck, hours after their Dateline interview aired. The National Enquirer claimed that he cheated on her and then reports followed that she stopped wearing her ring. “What they put in the paper is not what happened, so it doesn’t matter,” she told W magazine in October 2003. “But watching that get so blown out of proportion, I was like, ‘Wow, so this is where we’re at.’ You can’t walk into a place and hang out with a couple of friends without it turning into a national scandal.” The actor denied cheating on his fiancee via his spokesperson and reportedly considered suing the tabloid.
‘Gigli’ marks the beginning of the end
Date: Aug. 1, 2003
The couple made the press rounds ahead of the premiere, giving joint interviews on Dateline and Access Hollywood, talking all about what it was like to work together and falling in love while making the film—and their chemistry was undeniable. Even with the widespread media coverage, Gigli bombed at the box office and with critics. It brought in $7.7 million worldwide, a massive failure for a movie with a $75.6 million budget. The couple attended the movie premiere together and posed for photos on the red carpet, but that didn’t stop the rumors that their relationship was also going downhill.
The couple postponed their highly anticipated wedding
Date: Sept. 13, 2003
The couple’s nuptials were supposed to take place in front of 400 guests in California on Sept. 14, 2003. The day before they planned to walk down the aisle, the couple released a joint statement via a spokesperson postponing the wedding. “Due to the excessive media attention surrounding our wedding, we have decided to postpone the date. When we found ourselves seriously contemplating hiring three separate ‘decoy brides’ at three different locations, we realized that something was awry,” a joint statement released by Dan Klores, Lopez’s New York-based spokesman at the time said. “We began to feel that the spirit of what should have been the happiest day of our lives could be compromised. We felt what should have been a joyful and sacred day could be spoiled for us, our families, and our friends.”
Lopez and Affleck announced their split
Date: Jan. 22, 2004
The couple reportedly split briefly after their canceled wedding. They got back together shortly after but had no plans to reschedule the ceremony. The actor then traveled abroad to promote his film Paycheck, which premiered Christmas Day 2003, while she was spotted in Miami partying with ex Diddy in January. The actors officially called it quits and announced their breakup on Jan. 22, 2004. The breakup was blamed on the constant attention from the media. “Jennifer Lopez has ended her engagement to Ben Affleck. At this difficult time, we ask that you respect her privacy,” the actress’ rep said at the time. Affleck’s rep’s statement, on the other hand, told the New York Daily News: “I am not going to confirm anything about his personal life. We don’t want to get dragged into quicksand. Everybody wants a war. It’s not happening from our side.”
Their movie Jersey Girl came out on March 26, 2004, making it their second failed attempt at having a box office hit. (Spoiler ahead) Lopez’s character dies early on in the film, and the movie ended up underperforming and bombing at the box office. Affleck and Lopez remained friendly and the press continued to ask about their relationship through the years.
Both actors quickly move on
Date: June 5, 2004
J.Lo married longtime friend Marc Anthony in June 2004, and they welcomed twins Max and Emme in 2008. The singers announced their split in 2011 and he filed for divorce in 2012. After 10 years of marriage, they finalized the divorce in 2014.
Affleck also moved on, going public with his Daredevil co-star Jennifer Garner at the World Series in October 2004. They married in June 2005 and had three kids together: daughters Seraphina and Violet and son Samuel. They announced their separation in June 2005, 10 years after tying the knot, and divorced in October 2018.
Affleck says he regrets starring in J.Lo’s video
Date: May 2008
In 2008, Affleck stated that he nearly “ruined” his career by starring in the “Jenny From the Block” video in 2002. “If I have a regret, it was doing the music video. But that happened years ago. I’ve moved on,” he told the Daily Record, adding that J.Lo wasn’t to blame. “It not only makes me look like a petulant fool (to blame her), but it surely qualifies as ungentlemanly? For the record, did she hurt my career? No.” Affleck also opened up about the breakup during an October 2008 appearance on the British TV show Live. “I think Jen and I made a mistake in that we fell in love, we were excited and maybe too accessible,” he shared at the time. “I don’t think either of us anticipated the degree to which it would take on a world of its own.”
J.Lo said Affleck was her “first real heartbreak”
Date: Nov. 4, 2014
In her 2014 memoir True Love, the singer opened up about them calling off their engagement in January 2004. “It felt like my heart had been torn out of my chest,” she wrote in the book. “And when the realization that I wasn’t going to have the fairytale family I wanted really set in, well, that was when I really started to fall apart.” She also opened up about the pressure they dealt with in a People interview in 2016. “We didn’t try to have a public relationship,” she said. “We just happened to be together at the birth of the tabloids, and it was like, ‘Oh my God.’ It was just a lot of pressure.” She also revealed that things felt right when she met Affleck. “I felt like … ‘OK, this is it. [But] sometimes I feel like what you think people are and how you see them when you love them is different than when they reveal later.” She added: “I think different time, different thing, who knows what could’ve happened, but there was a genuine love there.”
The “Dance Again” singer has also explained how Gigli bombing and the breakup affected her at the time. “I was eviscerated,” she told Vanity Fair in an interview in October 2017. “I lost my sense of self, questioned if I belonged in this business, thought maybe I did suck at everything, And my relationship [with Affleck] self-destructed in front of the entire world. It was a two-year thing for me until I picked myself up again.”
The actress found love again with a Yankee
Date: February 2017
After ending her relationship with Casper Smart in 2016 and a quick fling with Drake that same year, Lopez began dating former baseball player Alex Rodriguez in February 2017. After dating for two years, A-Rod proposed to J.Lo in March 2019 during a trip to the Bahamas. By December 2020, the couple was forced to postpone their wedding twice due to the coronavirus pandemic. “There’s no rush, we’re good, everything’s cool and it’ll happen when the time is right,” the singer told Access Hollywood at the time.
Date: Jan. 14, 2021
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast, the Oscar winner looked back at how heavily their relationship was covered by the tabloids and on the internet, and how poorly J.Lo was treated by the public. “There is always a story of the month. Me dating Jennifer Lopez happened to be that tabloid story at the time when that business grew exponentially,” he said. “At first it was an infatuation, what an interesting couple and then there was a ton of resentment—ton of resentment against me, a ton of resentment against Jennifer.”
“People were so fucking mean about her. Sexist, racist, ugly, vicious shit was written about her in ways that if you wrote it now you would literally be fired for saying those things you said. Now it’s like, she’s lionized and respected for the work she did, where she came from, what she accomplished—as well she fucking should be!” he continued. “I would say you have a better shot, coming from the Bronx, of ending up as like [Justice Sonia] Sotomayor on the Supreme Court than you do of having Jennifer Lopez’s career and being who she is at 50 years old today.”
The actor shared a similar thought during his interview with Vanity Fair in 2003. “I think it has to do with race and class, the fact that I’m white and she’s Puerto Rican. That’s what’s underneath, although nobody says it, because it’s not politically correct,” he said at the time. “I think this also has to do with race. There’s a kind of language that’s used about her—the spicy Latina, the tempestuous diva. She’s characterized as oversexed. I mean, the woman’s had five boyfriends in her whole life! She’s a deeply misunderstood woman, in my opinion.”
Affleck openly praises his ex, again
Date: April 5, 2021
J.Lo was on the cover of InStyle in April and received praise from her friends and collaborators, including her exes Marc Anthony and Affleck. “I thought I had a good work ethic, but I was completely humbled and blown away by what she was committed to doing day in and day out, the seriousness in which she took her work, the quiet and dedicated way she went about accomplishing her goals, and then how she would go back and redouble her efforts,” Affleck told the magazine. “She remains, to this day, the hardest-working person I’ve come across in this business. She has great talent, but she has also worked very hard for her success, and I’m so happy for her that she seems, at long last, to be getting the credit she deserves.”
He also said, “Where are you keeping the fountain of youth? Why do you look the same as you did in 2003 and it kind of looks like I’m in my 40s… at best?” The Second Act star responded, “I don’t have any [beauty] secrets except JLo Beauty—and I’m giving them all to everyone with every product. Ben is funny! He still looks pretty good too.”
Date: April 15, 2021
Rumors that A-Rod cheated on Lopez with Southern Charm star Madison LeCroy began to swirl in February 2021 and the following month, sources told Page Six that the couple had split up. The couple denied the report to TMZ in March, but revealed that they were “working through some things.” Then on April 15, 2021, the couple revealed they were calling off their engagement. “We have realized we are better as friends and look forward to remaining so,” the couple told Today in a joint statement. “We will continue to work together and support each other on our shared businesses and projects.”
Coincidently, Affleck was dating his Deep Water co-star Ana de Armas for a little under a year before they split up in January 2021. The pair traveled to her native Cuba and spent much of the pandemic lockdown together before going their separate ways in early 2021.
After a long hiatus, Bennifer is back on
Date: April 30, 2021
A source told TMZ that Lopez and Affleck started emailing each other in early February 2021 while she was in the Dominican Republic filming Shotgun Wedding, then two months later in late April, they sparked rumors that they were back together. Insiders told People that the pair were “in contact” before she ended things with A-Rod but they said “she didn’t see Ben until it was over with Alex,” and that, “they didn’t make a plan behind Alex’s back that they would date.”
The public got its first look at Bennifer together since 2004, when the actor was spotted visiting her Los Angeles mansion on April 30. “They are friends. They have always been friends and they have seen each other through the years,” a source told People. “They have a great time hanging out. It’s been years since they caught up properly. They have lots to talk about. They plan on hanging out again.” The pair then went on their first vacation together since their reunion. The Oscar winner and the Grammy nominee spent a week together in Montana. E! News reported that after they attended the VAX LIVE event in Los Angeles on May 2 separately, they left together for the Yellowstone Club in Montana. “It’s natural between them, and the chemistry is unreal,” a source told E! a week later, adding that he reached out to her first. “They picked up where they last left off and are enjoying each other’s company right now.”
They then headed to Miami together. On May 26, he was spotted smoking a cigarette on the balcony at the same waterfront mansion where she was staying. The pair were spotted going to the gym together and were reportedly kissing during their workout. He was also seen wearing a watch that Lopez reportedly gifted him when they were together years ago. Page Six shared photos of the couple out to dinner in West Hollywood, California, on May 31 with her longtime friend and manager, Benny Medina. A source told E! News on June 8 that after she was reportedly looking for schools in California for her twins, the singer “is packing up her Miami rental” and moving to Los Angeles, where the Justice League actor resides.
So far, it looks Bennifer 2.0 is here to stay.
The couple announce their engagement
Date: Apr. 8
The couple announced that they are engaged again, a year after their reunion. Lopez announced their engagement via On the JLo—her newsletter to her fans that’s available via subscription. She teased the announcement with a video on social media saying, “I have a really exciting and special story to share.” The video on her website showed her crying while looking at a giant green diamond ring on her left hand, which is similar to the famous pink diamond Affleck gave her during their first engagement. In a voice-over on the clip, the actress says, “You’re perfect.” A representative for the singer confirmed the engagement to People.
The news comes after she was spotted wearing a diamond ring on her ring finger earlier that week. The couple have been making public plenty of appearances together since getting back together, and they made their red carpet debut at the Venice Film Festival in September 2021. They have since been spotted spending time together with their respective kids and attending each other’s movie premieres. Lopez accepted the Icon Award onstage at the 2022 iHeartRadio Music Awards in March and Affleck, her daughter, Emme, and his son, Samuel, were in the audience supporting her. It has been a long 18 years since the actors called off their first engagement, and so far, it looks Bennifer 2.0 is here to stay.
Date: Saturday, July 16
Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck got married on Saturday, July 16, just months after their engagement. Court records show the couple reportedly received a marriage license in Clark County, Nevada.
The document was issued to Benjamin Geza Affleck and Jennifer Lynn Lopez, who was identified as Jennifer Affleck. A source close to the couple confirmed to TMZ that pair indeed tied the knot.