Ben Affleck names the greatest acting performance of all time: “I remember where I was”
Somewhere along the line, people seemed to decide, en masse, that Ben Affleck was not a likeable celebrity. Something about those highly-publicised relationships with Jennifer Lopez, mournful pap walks with Dunkin’, and that messy first divorce turned the internet against him and has made him into something of a punchline. However, let us not forget that at one point, he was considered to be a wunderkind.
In 1998, at just 25 years old, Affleck became the youngest person to ever win the Oscar for ‘Best Original Screenplay’, an award he shared with 27-year-old Matt Damon for Good Will Hunting. When he turned to directing, he was equally successful, as long as we ignore his first directorial effort, a short film called (and I am not kidding) I Killed My Lesbian Wife, Hung Her on a Meathook, and Now I Have a Three Picture Deal at Disney. That doozy aside, his first film was 2007’s Gone Baby Gone, a harrowing, brilliantly realised police procedural which he also co-wrote.
Five years later, Affleck hit the jackpot again with the historical thriller Argo. It won three Oscars, including ‘Best Picture’, making Affleck a two-time Oscar winner in two categories. Although he is probably considered by many to be more of a movie star than an auteur, there is no denying that, at least on paper, his greatest achievements have been behind the camera.
With all of this experience on and off-screen, Affleck is in an excellent position to know what great acting is, and when he visited the Criterion Closet in 2025, he didn’t disappoint. Plucking Spike Lee’s Denzel Washington vehicle Malcolm X from the shelf, he said, “There is not a performance I can think of that’s better than this. I remember where I was when I watched the movie, and I remember when I walked out, I thought, ‘I want to be a better man.’”
There are many ways that movies can touch you. They can unearth long-buried grief, incite rage over injustice, or simply make you miss that high school sweetheart you broke up with 20 years ago. But some of the most powerful movies are the ones that inspire you to be a better person, whether it’s a better parent, partner, citizen, or human.
The story of Malcolm X is galvanising in and of itself, but Washington was channelling something truly special when he stepped into the role. Lee based the script on the Civil Rights leader’s memoir and used many of his speeches verbatim, but Washington used his famous flair for improvisation to astonishing effect. During one scene, the actor kept speaking long after he’d finished the text of the speech. Lee recalled that, to his amazement, Washington’s additions were even better than the source material. When he asked the actor where his words had come from, Washington said simply, “Spike, I don’t know.”
To this day, many would agree that that was Washington’s finest performance, even though he lost the Oscar to Al Pacino that year. He disappeared into the character, and, like all the greatest actors taking on the role of a real-life person, made it his own while staying true to the essence of the man.
