Ben Affleck claims his massive phoenix back tattoo is a fake

The 'tattoo' was not a hit with either of his high-profile former partners

Ben Affleck (Bryan Bedder/Getty Images)

Ben Affleck says the infamous “mid-life crisis” tattoo of a phoenix rising from the ashes on his back is (thankfully) fake.

Affleck turned heads when he was spotted on the set of upcoming film Live by Night sporting a multicoloured tattoo which took up pretty much all of his back a few months after his highly-publicised split from his wife of ten years, Jennifer Garner, was announced.

However, in an interview with Extra to promote his new film Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice, Mario Lopez asked the actor the question on everybody’s lips: if the tattoo is real.

“It’s fake for a movie,” the 43-year-old claimed.

The tattoo, dubbed a “midlife-crisis tattoo” by Vanity Fair, has attracted much attention due to the opinions on it shared by two of Affleck's former partners.

In an interview with the same magazine Garner commented: “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.”

Just a couple of weeks later Jennifer Lopez, who dated Affleck from 2002 to 2004, didn’t hold back when revealing her feelings on the matter.

“It’s awful!,” she told Andy Cohen on Watch What Happens Live. “I mean, I would tell him that… like… what are you doing? It has too many colours. His tattoos always had too many colours. They shouldn’t be so colourful, you know what I mean? They should be, like, cooler. I don’t know.”

What those other colourful tattoos look like is still the source of speculation as Affleck did say he has a number of others adding that they can get addictive.

“I actually do have a number of tattoos… I try to not to have them on places where you have to do a lot of covering […] they get sort of addictive, tattoos, after a while.”