Let’s get real: This is a great cover. She looks like the newest model for Louis Vuitton’s line of preppy college clothes for fall. (Which I guess is somewhat accurate, if your college student has LV cash.) She’s gorgeous and this photo makes me want to buy a giant rugby shirt, which is a terrible idea for me personally. Elle pulled it off!

This is the clip that’s getting all the traction from the profile:

Well, and there was a lot of attention focused on her for a widely photographed and gossiped-about relationship with Ben Affleck. How was that, I had to ask. “Horrible,” she says, nodding and opening her big, round hazel eyes for emphasis. Really? “Yeah, which is good,” she says. “That’s one of the reasons why I left L.A.”

She had spent seven years in Los Angeles, seeing other performers’ lives become a fishbowl complete with paparazzi tracking your every move. “Going through it [myself] confirmed my thoughts about, ‘This is not the place for me to be,’” she says. “It became a little bit too much. There’s no escape. There’s no way out.” In Los Angeles, she adds, “it’s always the feeling of something that you don’t have, something missing. It’s a city that keeps you anxious.”

Here is the thing. I do not doubt that at some point she realized what she and Ben were doing was stressful and too much, and it made her crazy. I have seen a million candid celeb shots in the last 18 years; most people just walk down the street normally, some smile for the cameras calmly and move on, sometimes folks look grumpy and flip the bird. Ana and Ben’s near daily pap walks often included her laughing at him uproariously in vignettes that looked rather staged. I do not know if she and Ben decided that they might as well make hay while the sun shines — and I don’t blame her for that; her career was on a roll and then the pandemic upended the entire thing. She needed to find some way to stay top of mind. But LOADS of celebs live in LA and never get snapped by the paparazzi at all. For example: We only occasionally see Ben and J.Lo!  So I don’t know if this is actually the city’s fault, or the fault of whoever decided she needed to be doing this to remain in the public eye; I suspect it is the later. But good on her for realizing she hated it and moving on; the rest of the profile makes it pretty clear that she mostly wants to talk about her work and she’s certainly got plenty to talk about. Eventually, I look forward to her memoir and the chapter called The Ben Thing. Did he get her addicted to Dunkin’?!

Having said all this, the editorial shoot is really good. She looks gorgeous — sexy and moody, with great hair. What else could you want?

WRITTEN BY: MARISA MELTZER; PHOTOGRAPHED BY: CHRISTIAN MACDONALD; STYLED BY: ALEX WHITE
Tags: Elle
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