Ben Affleck has joked about his “garish tattoos”, shortly after paparazzi photos revealed the colourful full back ink he had originally denied getting shortly after his split with Jennifer Garner.
The actor has originally said the large tattoo of a phoenix, which covered his whole back, was fake when he was first asked about it in 2016.
However, recent topless shots from the set of Triple Frontier in Hawaii showed the huge piece of body art is still present.
Last Saturday, almost exactly two years after Ben Affleck denied its existence, the back tattoo returned to haunt the headlines, itself a phoenix rising from the ashes of gossip rags past. https://t.co/wItYWWlb5I
— The New Yorker (@NewYorker) March 29, 2018
The Oscar winner had been absent from Twitter since December 2017 but returned to the platform to respond to an article in US magazine The New Yorker entitled The Great Sadness Of Ben Affleck.
He tweeted: “@NewYorker I’m doing just fine. Thick skin bolstered by garish tattoos.”
@NewYorker I’m doing just fine. Thick skin bolstered by garish tattoos.
— Ben Affleck (@BenAffleck) March 29, 2018
Asked about the ink in her first interview since the split, Garner told Vanity Fair in March 2016: “You know what we would say in my hometown about that? ‘Bless his heart.’
“A phoenix rising from the ashes. Am I the ashes in this scenario? I take umbrage. I refuse to be the ashes.”
Affleck’s friend Matt Damon also weighed in on the body art, telling The Daily Show’s Trevor Noah: “It’s not one man’s job to tell another man what he can do to his back.
“I support him in all of his artistic expression.”