• October 13, 2003
• Vol. 60
• No. 15

Ben Affleck: The Unmakeover

Goodbye, Prada, Hello, Pickup: The Runaway Groom Goes Back to Looking Like Benny from the Block

Life's one lousy fairy tale, isn't it, Jen? You take a handsome lump of a guy named Ben Affleck, groom him to be the ideal Hollywood mate—a red-carpet Prince Charming—and no sooner is the wedding postponed than he morphs into a duke...of Hazzard. Outside Savannah, where the couple continued to hole up at Affleck's mansion last week, locals kept spotting a casually chic Jennifer Lopez, 34, running around with a goateed guy who looked like Goober Pyle: "He wore the exact same T-shirt every day," one observer says of the actor, 31. "J.Lo is not going to put up with that." Or is she? Lopez was sporting her engagement ring again on a Sept. 28 trip to Wal-Mart, where they splurged on a chain saw and shotgun shells. (Don't get too excited. "They ain't getting married for now," says a source close to Affleck.) Still, he's making some sort of declaration of independence. "He must have been living a big ol' pretense," says Leon Hall, formerly of E!'s Fashion Emergency. "She had a fine whip she was snapping: 'I'm looking Louis Vuitton, and you're going to too.' Now his clothes are big and baggy: 'I'm back to being me. I'm not going to be Mr. Lopez.'" Just don't expect J.Lo to dress up as Daisy Duke.