Jennifer Garner Helped Save Ben Affleck's New Movie 'The Way Back'

Ben Affleck's performance in the new movie The Way Back is being praised by critics. The film follows a widowed, former basketball all-star struggling with addiction. Over the course of the film, Affleck's character attempts to find redemption by becoming the coach of an underdog high school basketball team at his alma mater.

While promoting The Way Back, Affleck has been candid about how cathartic working on the film was for him. In October 2019, Affleck suffered a relapse in his own struggle with alcoholism. For the third time in seventeen years, Affleck checked himself into rehab. The Way Back's director Gavin O'Connor revealed in a recent interview that filming was set to begin only a few days after Affleck went rehab. According to O'Connor, the movie may not have happened at all if Affleck's ex-wife Jennifer Garner hadn't stepped in to save the day.

"Just as we started prepping the movie, Ben fell off the wagon," O'Connor told 34th Street magazine. "So he ended up going to rehab, and I didn't know if the movie was over. The studio certainly thought the movie was over. His ex–wife Jennifer Garner called me up, and told me that when he went to rehab, he took a basketball with him. She said, 'Gavin, he's asking you, please don't pull the plug on the movie, he really wants to do this.'"

"So, he had about a week of detoxing, because he really went off the deep end, and after a week, I was able to go see him," O'Connor continued. "We spent half a day together and figured out a way to do this that will work for him, because most importantly he needed to recover and needed to get his sobriety on track. That overtook everything. And then he got out the day before we started shooting. So we had a very raw, vulnerable guy showing up for our first day of shooting."

Affleck and Garner have remained close friends since they split back in 2015. Recently, Affleck called their divorce his biggest regret. "Shame is really toxic. There is no positive byproduct of shame. It's just stewing in a toxic, hideous feeling of low self-worth and self-loathing," he explained in an interview with the New York Times. "It's not particularly healthy for me to obsess over the failures— the relapses—and beat myself up. I have certainly made mistakes. I have certainly done things that I regret. But you've got to pick yourself up, learn from it, learn some more, try to move forward."

The Way Back hits theaters on Friday, March 6.

Photo: Getty