Did you know Ben Affleck is bilingual?
While speaking about his new movie "Air," the Oscar winner showcased his conversationally fluent Spanish in an interview with Spain-based radio network La Cadena SER, which was posted on the outlet's TikTok account on April 3. The video has gone viral and has spurred jokes from fans, including one who commented, "This is our new Benito, huh?"
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The Justice League actor has showcased his Spanish skills before, chatting in the language with paparazzi on the street and journalists on TV.
So how does Affleck know how to speak Spanish so well? In 2020, he said on The Kelly Clarkson Show that he speaks Spanish "passively" and learned the language as a teen actor working on location in Mexico in the '80s.
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He appeared to be referencing his experience filming the PBS educational series "The Second Voyage of the Mimi," which focused on a fictional crew of a sailboat who explored Mayan ruins in southern Mexico. It served as a sequel to "The Voyage of the Mimi" show, which marked the actor's TV debut.
Jennifer Lopez & Ben Affleck's 2022 Thanksgiving With Family
"I did a little kids TV series when I was young, and when I was 13, that season, that year was in Mexico," Affleck told Kelly Clarkson. "And so I was in Mexico for a year, and that's how I picked it up."
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The actor noted how he helped his and ex-wife Jennifer Garner's eldest daughter Violet Affleck—14 at the time and now 17—improve her own Spanish skills for school.
"She's gotten to the grade where she's like in the harder Spanish classes and she's getting better and she's like right at the point where I think she might be passing me," joked Affleck, who has since married Jennifer Lopez. "And that was when I was like, 'Nope, this is not happening. I don't mind that I can't do your math homework and you're 14 years old, but you are not gonna be better at Spanish than me.' And so, I've decided now, I've gotta like, take classes, I've gotta do something to keep up."
Affleck noted how he's run into criticism of his Spanish skills from fluent Spanish speakers. "The problem with Spanish is that you learn a bunch of words, like I learn all these words, in Mexico, some good, some ya know. And then you go somewhere else, like you go to Spain or you go to South America and they're like, 'No, that's not Spanish.'"
He added, "And then they're like, you have a Mexican accent."
Affleck is not the only celeb who has surprised fans with his multilingual skills. Check out other stars you may not have known speak another language fluently:
Sandra Bullock
The Oscar winner speaks German fluently. Her late mom, opera singer Helga Mathilde Meyer, was born in Germany and Bullock lived there as a child and grew up speaking German.
Bullock has showcased her foreign language skills onstage, including at the 2012 Oscars, where she presented the Best Foreign Language Film award in German.
Bradley Cooper
The Pennsylvania native speaks fluent French, as seen in press interviews. "When I was a kid, I remember watching Chariots of Fire," he told People in 2011. "And French is the official language of the Olympics. So there's a scene where a guy was speaking French and I thought, 'Man, that sounds so cool. I want to learn French.'"
According to the magazine, Cooper later lived in France for six months as part of an exchange program.
Natalie Portman
The Israeli-American Black Swan actress, born in Jerusalem as Natalie Hershlag to Israeli parents, speaks fluent Hebrew and has showcased her foreign language skills in Israeli press interviews as well as on Inside the Actor's Studio in 2014 and in a 2017 Vanity Fair video.
Mila Kunis
Like many people who grew up in the Soviet Union before it collapsed, the Ukrainian-born actress can understand and speak Russian. In 2011, she communicated in the language at a panel event for the movie "Friends With Benefits" in Moscow to shut down a reporter who asked her co-star Justin Timberlake why he pursued a movie career.
"If he wants to make movies and he can, why shouldn't he?" Kunis said in Russian. "What kind of question is that? Why are you here?"
Lupita Nyong'o
The Oscar winner was born in Mexico to Kenyan parents and grew up in Nairobi. She speaks fluent English, Spanish, Luo and Swahili.
"I was born in Mexico because my father was teaching at a school in Mexico City," she told CNN in 2014. "I was born during the third year he was there. And when I was 16, I returned to Mexico to learn Spanish. I lived in Taxco, Guerrero and attended the UNAM, the Education Center for Foreigners. [I] lived there for seven months and I loved it."
Sebastian Stan
The Winter Soldier is originally from Romania. At age 8, he moved to Austria with his mom, a pianist. He and his family relocated to the United States when he was a pre-teen. The actor has occasionally given interviews to Romanian media outlets in their native language.
Zoe Saldaña
The New Jersey-born actress lived in the Dominican Republic between ages 10 and 17 and speaks fluent Spanish. "Spanish was my first language," she told Cosmopolitan in 2014. "Then you go to school, and within a month you're completely an English baby. So that's the battle you're always having: It's English out there and Spanish in the house. I don't say 'Mommy,' I say 'Mami.'"
Timothée Chalamet
The actor, the son of French-American journalist Marc Chalamet, speaks fluent French, as seen in TV interviews. "I grew up speaking both French and English," he told U.K. magazine RSNG, "since my father comes from France."
Tom Hiddleston
Aside from his native English, the British Loki star can speak Spanish, French and Greek.
"It's something that's always fascinated me since I was at school," Tom said on the SiriusXM radio show In-Depth with Larry Flick in 2019. "It's really curious, when you're a child, you don't know why you're good at things, and I wasn't particularly, in fact, at all gifted at mathematics or the sciences. But as soon as we started learning languages, I found I had an affinity for it."
