Ben Affleck has no interest in seeking public office, even after playing a candidate for Los Angeles mayor. While promoting the new movie, the actor told Variety that becoming a politician sounds deeply unappealing, as reported by Page Six.

“I just think that’s enormously — I don’t know, man, that seems terrible,” Affleck told the outlet. His experience portraying a candidate only reinforced his concerns about political life.

“There’s a reason why political stories are often chosen as parables for moral compromise. You really get thrust up into the contrast between the ideal version of us and how we should be in our lives and the way it is.”

Affleck, 54, described politics as a “very depressing world, in my opinion. Tawdry. And that has no appeal to me.” He also declined to reveal which candidate he plans to support in the Los Angeles mayoral election this November.

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“I haven’t thought about being asked that. I don’t know if, given this movie, my endorsement harms or helps anybody,” he admitted. “I should stay agnostic, at least until the movie comes out.”

During an appearance on Good Morning America on Wednesday, Affleck said the collective standard for political leadership has fallen as the political world has evolved. He suggested that people now simply want someone who will be honest with them.

Affleck said there is a feeling across the country, among Democrats and Republicans alike, that “we’re not doing a very good job. We have a system that’s kind of failing us.”

Playing a man campaigning for mayor gave him a grim impression of the process. “This is not all that much fun. And it would be a hard way — you’re just raising money all the time.”

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Affleck and the actor playing his campaign manager in the movie once took shirts and hats bearing his character’s name into Los Angeles. They then told people that Affleck, appearing as his character, was running for mayor.

Voters asked for selfies and appeared interested in his supposed campaign. Affleck recalled that “people would launch into their whole thing and I was like ‘If I’m not careful, I’m going to win this.'”

“Do not vote for me for mayor!” he joked to the Good Morning America camera. Despite the enthusiastic reactions, Affleck maintained that holding political office would be an “awful job.”

Speaking with USA Today via The Sacramento Bee this week, he said he is “so disillusioned with the system and with politics and politicians, and the way it works.”

When told that his campaign advertisement in the movie was effective, Affleck pointed again to his frustration with real politics.

“I’d be flattered, except I think there’s such a low bar in politics these days,” he answered. His movie “Animals,” he explained, explores the moral compromises that people make when something personally important is at stake.

“The extremely effective nature of when a person individually has something to lose is when they’re most apt to make compromises,” he says.

“Are we just kind of self-seeking animals who, in retrospect, build stories to rationalize where we are and what we’ve done? And there’s another part of us, our sort of higher selves, which says, ‘Well, I’m going to adhere this moral code even if there’s a cost to me.'”

Affleck has participated in politics before, campaigning for candidates ranging from former Vice President Al Gore to former President Barack Obama. He now says he is “averse” to that world after witnessing what he called “hypocrisy, corruption and failure.”

“The way it’s constructed now is so geared around money, sound bites, cruelties and gotchas, and little snarky things that really have nothing to do with people’s lives whatsoever,” he said.

“And increasingly, it’s easier to get votes appealing to the worst in people than it is appealing to the best in them. If you’re telling a story about kind of morality and compromise, there are lots of pressures that are constantly asking you to sacrifice your principles.”

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