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How Casey Affleck Coparents His Sons With Ex-Wife Summer Phoenix: We’ve Found a ‘Nice Balance’ (Exclusive)

Casey Affleck Coparents His Sons With Ex-Wife Summer Phoenix
Casey Affleck Jason LaVeris/FilmMagic/Getty Images

Working together! Casey Affleck and his ex-wife, Summer Phoenix, are doing the best they can to raise their sons together.

Related: Putting the Kids First! These Former Celebrity Couples Are Crushing Coparenting

“If there are two parents in the world who have figured out how to parent in perfect harmony, they should call me up and tell me their secret and they should write a book and save the world,” the actor, 43, told Us Weekly exclusively of coparenting on Thursday, June 13. “In my experience it’s pretty impossible to not disagree. You both care about your kids so much, more than anything in the world. You both have had different childhoods from which you’re drawing your ideas from and eventually you’re going to have different opinions and it’s going to be tough to work out.”

The Oscar winner added: “Luckily, Summer is and always has been an amazing mother. She’s loving and fun and the boys worship her, so I think that even in our differences, she and I have found a nice balance.”

Related: Most Shocking Celebrity Splits

Casey Affleck Keeps His Sons Grounded
Casey Affleck in ‘Light of My Life.’ Courtesy of SABAN FILMS

Affleck and the actress, 40, who split in 2017, share sons Indiana, 15, and Atticus, 11. When it comes to dating other people, the Light of My Life star told Us that the former couple are “super sensitive” about introducing new partners to their sons.

“My kids are really, really sweet and I have such a strong relationship with their mom that I don’t think there would be any feeling ever that, like, ‘Oh, mom is being replaced,’” Affleck, who is currently dating actress Floriana Lima, explained. “All those things can be hard if the two parents have a lack of balance, but Summer and I construct the right balance and they’ve seemed totally cool around whoever I’m dating or mom’s boyfriend.”

The Boston native drew inspiration from his relationships with his sons in writing his new movie Light of My Life.

“When I was writing, one of the things that I was experiencing in my own life is you cannot protect your kids from everything in the world, but you can prepare them to protect themselves,” he told Us. “It’s an oversimplification of something that every parent deals with in their own way, but I think the movie is there to serve as a metaphor for the many dangers in the world and the way that a parent can hold too tightly to their kid and then that, too, becomes a danger to their kid. You have to realize there has to be a balance.”

Related: Everything Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner Have Said About Their Divorce and Coparenting

Light of My Life premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in February. The movie will be released in NYC and L.A. theaters on August 2, expanding to 100 screens and video on demand on August 9.

With reporting by Carly Sloane

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