The “horrendous” movie Ben Affleck wishes he’d never made: “From an everything standpoint”
Ben Affleck has had a Hollywood career like no other.
At the height of his fame, he was untouchable; the handsome, talented face of cinema that looked set to be a star for many, many years to come. His movies made money, his interviews sold magazines, and his relationships were the talk of the town. However, what goes up must come down, and for Affleck, it came down hard.
Things really started to fall off the wagon with the release of Daredevil. Affleck’s turn as Matt Murdock was met with ridicule and horror in equal measure and marked the beginning of a long and painful devolution. Along came Jersey Girl, Paycheck, and, worst of all, Gigli. Soon, his name was mud, and it would take a very long time for his reputation to be restored.
Long before his first fall from grace, however, he knew what it was like to work hard for his money. Prior to his first big break, Affleck toiled away in various low-impact jobs. He was part of a PBS show called The Voyage of the Mimi as a kid, which he later admitted he was “embarrassed” by. Even when he’d made a bit of a dent in tinseltown, he still had to make his money in less-than-ideal ways.
During an interview with Back Stage, Affleck spoke about some of the dark days from early in his career. Following initial success in the early 1990s with Dazed and Confused, he still struggled to gain a foothold in the acting world. “From there I kicked around and did a steroids movie for HBO, which was horrendous,” he said. When the publication asked if he meant from an “acting standpoint”, the heartthrob replied, “From an everything standpoint. The story didn’t work, and you can’t be good in something if it doesn’t work”.
This underwhelming project was part of an HBO anthology series called Lifetime: Families in Crisis. The series examined a number of real stories of people facing various social and ethnical issues with an aim to teach young people about the dangers of the world. Affleck’s episode was called ‘A Body to Die For: The Aaron Henry Story’ and saw him playing an aspiring teenage athlete who, in an effort to improve his physique, abuses steroids.
This may sound like a cheap, cheesy gig akin to those health and safety videos you used to watch in school, but Affleck was actually in good company. His episode also featured Ghostbusters star Ernie Hudson and future A Single Woman director Kamala Lopez. Other episodes in the series featured Will Wheaton, Claire Danes, Sam Rockwell, and Calista Flockhart. The script might not have been any good, but at least the chat in the green room would have been fun.
Three years after his HBO outing, Affleck and his bestest buddy in the whole wide world Matt Damon unleashed their joint coming-out party, Good Will Hunting. After that, it was off to the races for both men, and Affleck never had to do anything even remotely educational ever again.
