Weather 
Ben Affleck doesn’t want his kids to follow in his footsteps.
“You put something on your children when you have a public life, and that’s complicated,” Affleck, 53, told E! News in an interview published Wednesday, January 14, while discussing his three children with ex-wife Jennifer Garner. “We really want to give them room to figure out what they want to do.”
Affleck, who shares Violet, 20, Seraphina, 17, and Samuel, 13, with Garner, 53, said he would never “push” his children to become actors like their famous parents.
“They’re brilliant and lovely and wonderful and we love them and we’re proud of them,” he concluded before joking, “And [we] hope that they don’t waste their life acting.”
While Samuel and Seraphina have largely remained out of the public eye, Violet has been using her voice for activism since she was young. When Affleck and Garner’s eldest daughter was in kindergarten, she fought for her own privacy and played a part in a 2013 bill that restricted paparazzi when taking photos of children.
“Violet’s hyper-articulate — she is Ben Affleck’s daughter, and she stood up on a chair in a little velvet dress, with her hair a bit back and her glasses on and she didn’t say her R’s right, and she said: ‘We didn’t ask for this. We don’t want these cameras, they’re scary. The men are scary, they knock each other over and it’s hard to feel like a kid when you’re being chased,’” Garner recalled in a 2021 interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
Violet, who is now a student at Yale University, has also attended White House state dinners and United Nations assemblies to advocate for clean air and mask mandates following the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I contracted a post-viral condition in 2019,” Violet said during an L.A. County Board of Supervisors meeting in 2024. “I’m OK now, but I saw firsthand that medicine does not always have answers to the consequences of even minor viruses. The COVID-19 pandemic has thrown that into sharper relief.”
Later, while addressing the United Nations General Assembly in September 2025, Violet argued, “We can recognize filtered air as a human right, as intuitively as we do filtered water. We can create clean air infrastructure that is so ubiquitous and so obviously necessary, so that tomorrow’s children don’t even know why we need it.”
Jennifer Garner has a special bond with daughter Violet Affleck. Garner became a mom for the first time in 2005 when she and ex-husband Ben Affleck welcomed Violet. (The exes also share children Seraphina and Sameul who were born in 2009 and 2012, respectively.) “My eldest daughter [Violet] didn’t have a shot. She couldn’t have […]
Violet’s parents couldn’t be prouder of her for fighting for what she believes in.
“It is exciting,” Garner said of Violet starting college during a 2023 appearance on Live With Kelly and Mark. “I can see the stress — even though the excitement and stress go hand in hand. But she’s handling it like a champ and she’s totally in charge. I’m not having to say, ‘Are you doing this, are you doing this?’ She’s a self-starter. And I’m just proud of her no matter what.”
Meanwhile, Affleck told Access Hollywood of Violet in 2025, “She takes after her mom. She’s spectacular. And I’m very lucky that I got a great partner and we’ve got great kids. It’s the joy of my life, and I’m just very, very lucky. It makes me happy every day.”
