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'Bennifer' is no more
23/01/2004 11:00 - (SA)
Los Angeles - Hollywood's hottest couple, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez have split up, four months after calling off their wedding amid a media frenzy, J-Lo's spokesperson said on Thursday.
"I am confirming the reports that Jennifer Lopez has ended her engagement to Ben Affleck," Lopez's New York based publicist Rob Shuter said. "At this difficult time, we ask that you respect her privacy," he added.
Another source close to the US actress and diva said: "I can tell you that Jennifer and Ben have ended their engagement and that there are no plans for a reconciliation."
Affleck's publicist however declined to comment on the break-up. "As always, we never ever comment on the personal lives of our clients," his publicist Ken Sunshine said.
The announcement appeared to signal the end of Tinseltown's most celebrated couple who appeared so much in love and were seen so often together that they were dubbed "Bennifer" by the press.
The couple's 25-month-old relationship was Hollywood's most scrutinised and feted celebrity union since Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton ignited the tabloid pages in the 1960s.
They had planned to marry at an exclusive resort near the California town of Santa Barbara on September 14, but called off their nuptials just days before amid an unprecedented media frenzy.
At the time, the couple, who split up briefly after the wedding was called off, blamed the wedding fiasco on the voracious media attention focused on them.
Lopez, 34, and screen heart-throb Affleck, 31, then went their separate ways, keeping the world guessing as to whether their relationship was on or off.
"They are having some trouble, but you don't go from getting married on Sunday to being totally off," a source close to Lopez, said at the time. "It takes a process to get there, and while that process has started, we are not at that point yet."
Some reports suggested that J Lo called off the wedding after Affleck was spotted in a Canadian strip club last summer.
But after a week of separation the pair - pursued by packs of paparazzi - met up at Affleck's $7.1m estate near Savannah, in the southeastern state of Georgia, where they have frequently been seen since.
However, rumours have surfaced about their relationship in recent weeks after Affleck travelled to Europe alone to promote his latest film Paycheck and appeared at the Sundance Film Festival alone.
The couple's wedding would have been Affleck's first and a third marriage for Lopez, whose two previous marriages were brief and both ended in divorce.
J Lo and Ben became friendly in December 2001, on the set of their movie Gigli - the commercial and critical movie mega-flop of 2003 - and said they began dating after Lopez split up with her second husband, Cris Judd in July 2002.
She and dancer Judd had been married just nine months. Lopez earlier was married to chef Ojani Noa.
- AFP
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South Africa
