The Story Behind Ben Affleck's Horrible Back Tattoo

The internet went crazy when the pictures of a heavily tattooed Ben Affleck emerged - how did we miss that giant phoenix??

Simple explanation for this one - and slightly less rockstar-ish than we could've hoped. It's a fake tattoo for a movie he's working on.

He told Mario Lopez “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,” he said. “They get sort of addictive, tattoos, after a while.”

Unfortunately for the actor, not many people were fond of the tat. Jennifer Lopez said it was “awful” and his ex-wife Jennifer Garner had a few things to say about his body art too.

“You know what we would say in my hometown about that? ‘Bless his heart,’” the Miracles from Heaven actress recently told Vanity Fair. “A phoenix rising from the ashes. Am I the ashes in this scenario? I take umbrage. I refuse to be the ashes.”

- celebuzz.com