Ben Affleck tattoo truthers have been deliciously vindicated today, with newly-released photos showing the star’s enormous, sprawling back tatt in all its glory, two years after he went on the record to insist it was a fake.
The 45-year-old actor was snapped shirtless on a beach, while taking part in a training session with his Triple Frontier co-stars Oscar Isaac, Charlie Hunnam and Garrett Hedlund, with the tattoo fully on display.
The photos clearly show a phoenix rising up Affleck’s back in shades of blue, red and yellow, identical to the tatt that was first glimpsed in 2015, when he was snapped shirtless by a paparazzi during the filming of Live By Night.
Ben Affleck and Jared Leto’s Joker have the same tattoo on their backs?! 😂 pic.twitter.com/4CGXsEfncv
— Batman-News.com (@BatmanNewsCom) March 16, 2018
In 2016, Ben Affleck told Mario Lopez that the ink was “fake for a movie”, adding “I actually do have a number of tattoos but I try to have them in places where you don’t have to do a lot of cover up they get sort of addictive, tattoos, after a while.”
It’s unclear when exactly he got the ink, but it would appear to be after his 2015 split from Jennifer Garner, as she made fun of it in an interview with Vanity Fair, saying: “A phoenix rising from the ashes. Am I the ashes in this scenario? I take umbrage. I refuse to be the ashes.”
Hie ex-Jennifer Lopez also mocked it during an appearance on Andy Cohen‘s Watch What Happens Live. “It’s awful! What are you doing?” she laughed, when presented with a picture. “His tattoos always have too many colors, they shouldn’t be so colorful. They should be cooler.”
Affleck has yet to comment on these latest photos.
