Ben Affleck gives update on his sobriety

The 54-year-old Animals star has been open about his battle with alcohol abuse but he's been sober for more than five years and he's now admitted he needed to hit "rock bottom" to really make him want to turn his life around.

Ben told Variety: "When addiction starts to really take hold, it’s not enough to have it in your front brain and say: 'This is something I want to change. This isn’t good for me.'

"Something has to click on an amygdala level. That’s where the 'rock bottom' cliché comes from. It’s the same thing: You’ve got to suffer enough to have something at stake you don’t want to lose.

"Long-term sobriety, the gift of it is that it just gets easier. It seemed to me that part of it is you’ve got to run up against something difficult and painful enough.

"But the good news is that’s different for everybody - you’ve got to understand what you can control and what you can’t."

Ben went on to admit losing both of his parents in a short space of time has forced him to make peace with his mortality.

He said: "Both of my parents passed away this year ... One of the things you grapple with at my age when parents die is there’s a comfort and awareness in knowing this is how it’s supposed to go.

"When I go, it will be hard for my children, but none of us want it any other way. My mom said to me at the end of her life: 'God, I thought 84 years would seem longer.'

Ben - who has endured a number of stints in rehab over the years - has previously admitted his battle with alcoholism has been a big part of his life but he doesn't want it to be his while identity.

During an appearance on the Today show in 2019, he said: "It doesn’t really bother me to talk about alcoholism and being an alcoholic.

"It’s part of my life. It’s something that I deal with. It doesn’t have to sort of subsume my whole identity and be everything, but it is something that you know you have to work at.”

" feel like I had a problem and I really want to address it, and I take some pride in that … it’s about yourself, your life, your family, and you know people - we encounter these kinds of hurdles and we have to deal with them."