In the movie The Way Back, Ben Affleck‘s character learns about second chances.
The actor plays Jack Cunningham—a former high school basketball star who walked away from the sport only to return to the game as coach of his alma mater’s team. Throughout the movie, viewers learn about the pain Jack has experienced from his battle with alcoholism, the end of his marriage and the loss of his child.
It’s a project that resonated with Affleck for many reasons. “I’m a recovering alcoholic and I played an alcoholic in the movie,” he said in a recently published roundtable discussion with The Hollywood Reporter that took place in January. “It’s really about grief and losing a child, which, thank God, I have not experienced, and is probably the worst thing you can experience. But also, a lot of it is about alcoholism.”
Affleck has publicly discussed his own battle with alcoholism and his sobriety journey in the past.
“Alcoholism, in and of itself, and compulsive behavior, are not inherently super interesting, but what is sometimes interesting is what you discover about yourself in the course of recovery and trying to figure out what went wrong, how to fix it, how you want your life to look and what kind of ethics you want to live by,” he continued. “So yes, I’m an alcoholic. Yes, I had a relapse. Yes, I went into recovery again. And then I went and did that movie.”
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