Gwyneth Paltrow made the rare move of mentioning her ex-boyfriend Ben Affleck this week.
The 53-year-old Academy winner was a guest on Tuesday’s episode of Amy Poehler’s Good Hang podcast, where the host asked about her connection to late actor Robin Williams.
‘I only got to know him a bit when Good Will Hunting came out because I was dating one of the people who wrote that movie and was in that movie,’ she said without mentioning Affleck also 53, by name.
‘We’re well aware,’ Poehler joked before noting that Affleck was ‘so good in that movie.’
Paltrow agreed: ‘I love that movie. It’s a perfect movie. I love it so much.’
Paltrow and Affleck were an item from 1997-2000 and co-starred in the 1998 film Shakespeare in Love, as well as 2000’s Bounce.
Gwyneth Paltrow made the rare move of mentioning her ex-boyfriend Ben Affleck this week
Paltrow and Affleck were an item from 1997-2000 and co-starred in the 1998 film Shakespeare in Love, as well as 2000’s Bounce; pictured in 1998
A 2025 Gwyneth Paltrow biography written by Amy Odell gives a clue about why her romance with the Boston native ended.
In Gwyneth: The Biography, it’s revealed that the actress may have been cheated on by the actor.
‘Their physical chemistry couldn’t overcome his self-destructive impulses, which may have even included cheating on her,’ the author penned.
According to Odell, after the couple broke up, Paltrow said, ‘I love men, even though they’re lying, cheating scumbags.’
Elsewhere in the coverage of their romance, Odell wrote: ‘She spoke openly about how much she enjoyed their sex life. She told [makeup artist and her friend Kevy] Aucoin one day that she loved when Affleck [engaged in a certain sex act].’
The exes starred alongside each other in two films during their coupling — 1998’s Shakespeare in Love, which earned Paltrow an Oscar, and 2000’s rom-com Bounce.
According to Entertainment Tonight, the Goop founder told Howard Stern in 2015 that Affleck was not ‘in a good place in his life to have a girlfriend’ when they were together.
She noted at the time: ‘I think [my parents Bruce Paltrow and Blythe Danner] appreciated how he’s super intelligent and he’s really, really talented and so funny, but he was not in a good place in his life to have a girlfriend.
‘I think they were OK with the two of us not being together.’
More recently, while appearing on a Call Her Daddy podcast episode in 2023, the silver screen siren compared Ben to another famous ex-boyfriend, Brad Pitt, 62.
She dated Pitt beginning in 1994, and the couple were even engaged.
It was written that the Boston, Massachusetts native ‘was struggling with alcoholism and a gambling habit,’ throughout their relationship; seen in 1998
‘Come hang with @amypoehler and special guest @gwynethpaltrow tomorrow,’ teased a caption on the Good Hang Instagram account on Monday
The blonde beauty called off the engagement in 1997 because at age 24, she felt she was too young for marriage.
Asked who was better in bed, she answered: ‘That’s really hard. Because Brad was like the major chemistry love of [my] life at the time. And then Ben was like, technically excellent.’
Asked who she regarded as the better actor of the two, she said: ‘They’re both so talented. And Ben is a great writer and director.
‘But I guess I would probably have to say acting alone, Brad. Because if you think of all the different roles that he’s done.’
Paltrow now shares two kids with ex-husband Chris Martin — daughter Apple, 21, and son Moses, 19.
She has been married to writer-director Brad Falchuk since 2018.
