The star of “The Accountant 2” feels Spears is a victim of a system in which paparazzi are paid to make stars “have a nervous breakdown and go crazy.”

Ben Affleck in New York City in 2025, and Britney Spears in Beverly Hills in 2018

Ben Affleck wishes that Britney Spears — and all celebrities of their stature — were a bit more protected.

“Here’s the thing: When somebody’s taking a picture of me, I’m bummed. Because usually I’m with my kids, I’m trying to go somewhere, and then there’s four guys who are like, ‘Hey, man!’ Every time,” the star of The Accountant 2 said on the April 24 episode of This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von, addressing the “sad Affleck” memes that sprang from a set of 2020 pap shots,

“The idea is, like, follow somebody around, antagonize them, and then hopefully they’ll have like a nervous breakdown and go crazy on you, and then your video will be worth more money,” Affleck explained.

He then imagined what other A-listers must go through.

“I can remember a long time ago, you know, years and years ago, I really had a lot of empathy for Britney Spears,” he said. Though he didn’t know Spears personally, he said, “Having had my own experiences, I knew these people are following her around in a time where she may or may not have been having difficulty.”

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The way Affleck sees it, stars don’t melt down in front of armadas of flashing cameras and screaming paparazzi, they melt down because of such spectacles.

“I don’t know her, but I do know that the cycle of having people harangue you and yell at you and hassle you and follow you, it kind of seemed like that itself was whipping up the whole thing into a tizzy.” he said.

Affleck sees the current system that has effectively normalized the invasion of public figures’ personal space as a “kind of collective cruelty, where what’s taken out of the image that you see are the people waving the stick at the tiger…and all you see is the growling animal.”

Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez in New York City in 2002.

As one half of “Bennifer,” the celebrity power couple made up of him and Jennifer Lopez, Affleck should know. The duo probably kept the entire tabloid magazine industry alive during their brief relationship in the early 2000s.

Affleck’s past few years of romantic engagements with stars like Ana de Armas, ex-wife Jennifer Garner, and Lopez, with whom he reconciled in 2021, married in 2022, and divorced in 2025, have re-ignited paparazzi fervor for the actor, leaving him less than pleased.

The reason he has “resting hard face,” as he told Kevin Hart in a 2024 episode of Peacock’s Hart to Heart, is out of concern for his children, not himself.

“I don’t mind, you can take my picture at a club or a premiere, with my wife, I don’t give a f—. Knock yourself out. I don’t notice you. But with my children that’s a different thing,” he said.