Ben Affleck’s giant back tattoo is a fake.
The 42-year-old actor caused a stir when he showed off a huge phoenix design while filming ‘Live By Night’ in December, and though he admitted he does have a number of pieces of body art, they’re all in easy-to-conceal places and the eye-catching image isn’t one of them.
Asked about the tattoo, he told ‘Extra’ presenter Mario Lopez: "[It’s a] fake for a movie. 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."
Even Ben’s ex-wife Jennifer Garner – who he split from last June after 10 years of marriage – was taken in by the fake tattoo.
The ‘Miracles from Heaven’ star – who has three children, Violet, 10, Seraphina, seven, and Samuel, four, with Ben – said recently: "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."
And Jennifer Lopez – who dated Ben between 2002 and 2004 – recently slammed the artwork as "awful" and not very cool.
She said: "It’s awful. And I would tell him that. I would tell him, what are you doing? It has too many colours! His tattoos have too many colours. They shouldn’t be so colourful, you know what I mean? They should be, like, cooler."