Ben Affleck has no plans to seek public office.
The “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” actor told Variety that entering politics sounds “terrible” and “tawdry” to him.
Affleck made the comments while promoting “Animals,” a new film in which he plays a candidate for mayor of Los Angeles. “I just think that’s enormously — I don’t know, man, that seems terrible,” he said.
He said political stories often serve as parables about moral compromise because they highlight the gap between the ideals people hold and the difficult realities of how they actually live.
The 54-year-old actor described politics as “a very depressing world, in my opinion. Tawdry. And that has no appeal to me.”
Affleck also declined to say which candidate he supports in Los Angeles’ mayoral election this November.
“I haven’t thought about being asked that. I don’t know if, given this movie, my endorsement harms or helps anybody,” he said. “I should stay agnostic, at least until the movie comes out.”
During an appearance on Good Morning America on Wednesday, Affleck said the “collective bar for politics” has fallen as the political world has evolved. As a result, he said, voters increasingly seem to want someone who will simply “shoot me straight.”
He added that many Americans, regardless of whether they are Democrats or Republicans, share the feeling that “we’re not doing a very good job” and that “we have a system that’s kind of failing us.”
Portraying a mayoral candidate also gave Affleck a firsthand look at the demands of campaigning. “This is not all that much fun,” he said, describing it as a difficult path dominated by constant fundraising.
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At one point, Affleck and the actor who plays his campaign manager decided to wear campaign shirts and hats bearing his character’s name while walking around Los Angeles and pretending he was running for mayor.
Affleck said people responded by asking for selfies and expressing interest. Some even launched into detailed political conversations, prompting him to joke, “If I’m not careful, I’m going to win this.”
“Do not vote for me for mayor!” he added in a message delivered directly to the camera.
In an interview with USA Today published via The Sacramento Bee this week, Affleck called holding office an “awful job.” He said he has become “so disillusioned with the system and with politics and politicians, and the way it works.”
When told that his campaign advertisement in the movie was effective, Affleck said he would normally be flattered, but added that “there’s such a low bar in politics these days.”
Affleck explained that “Animals” examines the moral compromises people make when their interests and personal stakes are on the line.
“The extremely effective nature of when a person individually has something to lose is when they’re most apt to make compromises,” he said. “Are we just kind of self-seeking animals who, in retrospect, build stories to rationalize where we are and what we’ve done? And there’s another part of us, our sort of higher selves, which says, ‘Well, I’m going to adhere this moral code even if there’s a cost to me.’”
The actor has previously been active in politics, campaigning for candidates including former Vice President Al Gore and former President Barack Obama.
However, he said he is now “averse” to political involvement after witnessing what he described as widespread “hypocrisy, corruption and failure.”
Affleck argued that the current political system is increasingly driven by money, sound bites, cruelty and “gotchas” rather than issues affecting people’s daily lives. He said it has become easier to win votes by appealing to people’s worst instincts than by appealing to their better qualities—pressures that, he noted, continually encourage people to sacrifice their principles.