Former Batman Ben Affleck has revealed the reason he won’t run for political office, despite claiming there is a “collective disappointment” in how U.S. politics is currently trending.
Affleck is soon set to star in Animals, a political thriller for Netflix in which he plays a Los Angeles mayoral candidate involved in the criminal underworld.
Back in the early 2000s, Affleck occasionally expressed interest in following suit (minus the criminal underworld bit), but despite calls from many of his fellow cast members for him to genuinely pursue a political career, Affleck has now spoken out to squash the suggestion and reveal why he has no interest in public office — while simultaneously airing his unhappiness with the current state of the country.
“We don’t ask the question of ‘what are your qualifications to hold public office?’ any longer,” Affleck began, talking to Variety. “It’s, ‘You wanna join the circus? Who’s the biggest carny?’
“Whatever side of the aisle you’re on, one of the interesting things that people can agree on is a collective disappointment with the way that American politics has trended,” the former Batman continued. “There’s nobody alive now who thinks, ‘hey, we’re really doing it right and things are going great and I love this political system.’ And that’s a problem.”
While declining to get into specifics, Affleck stated he could name “lots of things” he believes are wrong with the U.S., as well as fixes for them. Affleck has long been a Democrat party supporter, and has supported every Democratic presidential nominee since Al Gore back in 2000.
“The other thing is where you set up being politician and it’s not about serving people, it’s just about money, raising money,” Affleck added. “It’s just about playing a sort of adolescent game of who can make fun of the other person better or be more reductive and stupid about something rather than actually trying to talk about the issues.
“I think the thing that’s missing from politics, frankly, is you have to lead. You can’t just scare people. You can’t just hector them. You can’t lecture them. You can’t guilt them into it. You’ve got to inspire them. Otherwise they don’t want to vote for you.”
So, why not go into politics? Affleck has now responded to say he was happy to stay as an actor, as “selfish” as this may be.
“Selfishly, I just see what a difficult grind of a job it is and I’d rather make movies about it,” he concluded.
Earlier this week, Ben Affleck attempted to dismiss concern around Netflix’s filmmaking process, in response to past comments from his long-term collaborator Matt Damon. At the same time, he also admitted Animals was riddled with AI elements, following his sale of an AI company to Netflix for around $600 million earlier this year.
Image credit: Michael Buckner/Variety via Getty Images.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at [email protected] or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
