Casey Affleck felt ''defensive'' about his brother Ben's relationship with Jennifer Lopez.

The 'Out of the Furnace' star admits there were times he was upset by the negative attention his sibling's high-profile relationship with the actress-and-singer received, but he doesn't feel the media interest surrounding the couple dubbed 'Bennifer' - who dated between 2002 and 2004 - was as bad as it seemed.

He recalled: ''Maybe I'm downplaying something that I shouldn't be, but it all happened gradually. We'd both been auditioning for a long time by then. When you first appear in tiny things here and there, that's what feels like a big deal; 'Holy s**t, that's me on that f***ing movie screen, will you look at that!' Then you do that eight times. Then you get a speaking line, and then it's like, 'Wow! I can't believe that's my own voice.' So by the time that you, or your brother, is the lead in a movie or the subject of gossip, you have a pretty thick skin.

''That said, there were times when I definitely felt defensive, and that he was being maligned.''

The younger Affleck also recalls feeling like a fish out of water when he and Ben, 41, moved to Los Angeles from Boston with their close friend Matt Damon, 43, in a bid to become movie stars.

He told the Sunday Times newspaper: ''I didn't come from this world at all. I don't think I once went onto the Sunset Strip, or even knew what that was. To think back to it, I was so oblivious to all the things that were happening in the city.''