April 2002. Jennifer Lopez was opening Madre’s, her restaurant in Pasadena, California, and the guest list looked like it belonged on a red carpet.
Among them were Ben Affleck and Nicole Kidman, and the cameras captured the three of them spending the evening together. In one of those photos, Jennifer looks up at Ben with a smile that anyone today would find themselves staring at a little too long.
At the time, she was still married to Cris Judd, and Affleck wasn’t her partner yet. It was months later, while they were working together on Gigli, that the romance began, giving rise to “Bennifer”, one of Hollywood’s most talked-about relationships. Madre’s remained open for about six years and closed in 2008.
An expression in a photograph can be read a thousand different ways, but this image remains a record of an encounter that took place long before the story began.
