Ben Affleck, whose 2004 split from Jennifer Lopez made international headlines, has changed his ways since settling down and becoming a dad, he says.

“I’ve never been very judicious about my own behavior or choices until they had an impact on people other than me,” Affleck, 34, tells USA Today.

“Obviously, my wife. And my daughter, who’s going to have my last name – I don’t want her to mutter it over a drink. I want her to be proud of her old man.”

Affleck and his wife, Jennifer Garner, never released photos of 1-year-old Violet. “We just didn’t sell them – that was the thing,” says Affleck, whose directorial debut, Gone, Baby, Gone, is due in 2007.

“I’m extraordinarily lucky and privileged,” he says, “and I’ve tried not to be bitter, but I have developed a reactionary defensiveness.”

He adds, “But for my child, she didn’t make the bargain I did. She didn’t make that choice. And I don’t want her to have to pay for the parents’ sins. I try to protect her privacy. I’ll end up in the magazines, and that’s life, and I can live with it, but I try to shield my daughter.”

And Affleck is a hands-on – and happy – dad. “Yes, I’ve changed diapers,” he told PEOPLE Wednesday at a New York City screening of his movie Hollywoodland. “Parenthood, the whole thing is wonderful. All the clichés that all the people bore you with are, in fact, true.”

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Parenting agrees with Ben Affleck. The father of Violet Anne Affleck, who turns 1 on Dec. 1, says he wants more children with wife Jennifer Garner – though just how many more seems open to discussion.

Ellen DeGeneres, broaching the topic with the 34-year-old actor on Wednesday’s The Ellen DeGeneres Show asks, “Will you have more? Should I ask that question?

Affleck’s response: “You know … sure, I would love to.”

“Many? A lot?” DeGeneres wonders aloud, prompting Affleck to say, “Okay, let’s back it up there.”

Suggesting, however, that “some people” would want “five or six” kids and would “love to have a large family,” DeGeneres is told by Affleck: “I think I should probably talk to my wife before I talk to you.”

As for his hiatus from film work, Affleck tells the TV host: “I took about a couple of years off, definitely for a full year I didn’t do anything and I did this (the period drama Hollywoodland), and then the rest of the time I spent directing a movie” – the Boston detective drama Gone, Baby, Gone, to be released next year.

Affleck says he purposefully took time off because, “I was a little bit exhausted of myself and my life, so I wanted to try to control it or manage it.”

He says he wanted to figure out for himself who he is and what he wants to do instead if “looking through the reflection through a magazine or being defined by somebody else.”

And what did he discover about stepping back to take a look? “It was good for me and good things happened for me. It was nice.”

Ben Affleck is relieved he never married ex-fiancee Jennifer Lopez and admits their engagement was a mistake. The ex-couple’s high profile relationship ended in 2004, just months after they were due to marry, a wedding that was called off at the last moment. Affleck insists it was a mistake to propose to his girlfriend of two years. He says: “I should never have got engaged and never gone down that route. I thought I wanted certain things, but I didn’t. I got lost and felt suffocated, miserable and gross. “Being in the middle of a tabloid frenzy, it became so intense I had to stop and think, ‘What am I doing with my life?’ “I had to smile for the cameras, but I was really in turmoil. I was no longer in control of my life and I didn’t know which way to turn. I felt like a hamster in a cage. The faster my legs went, the less distance I seemed to travel.”

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I LOVE THEM… even if Jennifer is sporting Laura Ingalls’ hairdo.

“Hollywoodland” is an exploration of fame and identity. The drama, inspired by one of Hollywood’s most infamous real-life mysteries, follows a 1950’s private detective who, investigating the mysterious death of “Superman” star George Reeves, uncovers unexpected connections to his own life as the case turns ever more personal. The torrid affair Reeves had with the wife of a studio executive might hold the key to the truth.

The movie stars: Adrian Brody, Diane Lane, Ben Affleck & Robin Tunney.

“Gone, Baby, Gone.”

Meanwhile Affleck gives younger brother Casey some friendly direction on the Boston set. The drama is based on a crime novel by Dennis Lehane, who also wrote Mystic River.