Ben Affleck and tattoos have a complicated history. The Hollywood star has received attention on multiple occasions for his huge back tattoo. However, his colorful rising phoenix is not the ink he regrets getting, but a design he got when he was just 16.
The actor recently admitted that there’s another piece of body art that kept him awake at night. During an interview on Complex’s GOAT Talk with his 'Accountant 2' co-star Jon Bernthal, the actor was asked to share the story of the worst tattoo he has ever gotten.
Bernthal opened the discussion with a near-miss: almost getting the word “nasty” permanently inked until his wife talked him down. Then, it was Ben's turn, who immediately started opening up about his tattoos, and how he has decided to cover many of them with other designs.
“I have a ton of cover-ups, you know? I’ve had them removed, I’ve had cover-ups, over and over again," he said during the interview. "But probably the worst was when — I was 16 or something, I thought I’d do a barbed wire thing,” he said, gesturing toward his upper arm.
“It was terrible," he revealed, which made him start thinking about a solution. "So I was like, I better get something to cover that, and it started the process,” he explained. “I just don’t have them where you have to see them for work.”
Ben tends to keep his body art under wraps. However, fans have caught glimpses of his ink, including his back tattoo when he was relaxing by the beach in Honolulu, Hawaii. Back in 2023, Jennifer Lopez shared a steamy photo of Ben showing many of his tattoos.
Fans got a rare look at the ink during Father’s Day when the two stars were still together. JLo decided to share a tribute for her then-husband, showcasing the ink around his torso and arms, the area in which the original barbed wire design was located before the cover-up.
When it comes to his infamous back tattoo, Ben previously said that it is a meaningful design. “It represents something important to me... It’s meaningful to me,” he said on The Ellen DeGeneres Show in 2019. “I like it. It’s something that I sort of kept private… I love my tattoo. I’m very happy with it.”