Matt Damon explains how Ben Affleck escaped from actor jail: “He couldn’t get a job”
They may have existed as a hive mind when trying to force their way into the industry, but once Matt Damon and Ben Affleck broke through and took separate paths towards finding sustained success, one of them fared much better than the other.
It was a small difference between their approaches that set them apart, and they ended up standing Damon in much better stead than Affleck. The former sought out interesting directors, challenging roles, and compelling characters, whereas the latter tried his luck at becoming a movie star.
In the aftermath of their ‘Best Original Screenplay’ win at the Academy Awards for Good Will Hunting, Damon appeared in Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan, Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr Ripley, George Clooney’s Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Francis Ford Coppola’s The Rainmaker, and Doug Liman’s The Bourne Identity.
Affleck, meanwhile, lent his name to Michael Bay’s Armageddon and Pearl Harbor, Jack Ryan prequel The Sum of All Fears, comic book adaptation Daredevil, John Woo’s Paycheck, and the infamous Gigli. A string of misfires saw his stock plummet to the point he could no longer get into the rooms he was being sought out to stand in just a few years previously.
He’d always harboured ambitions of directing, though, which saw Affleck light the touchpaper on his own renaissance by helming feature debut Gone Baby Gone, where he deliberately remained off-camera. He followed that up with crime thriller The Town before Argo ended up winning ‘Best Picture’ at the Oscars.
Affleck had eased himself into directing, stepped back in front of the camera for his next two features, and was suddenly back on top of the world again. It was always something he’d wanted to do, but as Damon explained to The Playlist, it was almost born from necessity more than anything else.
“He was forced into it, really, because he was in actor jail and couldn’t get a job that he wanted,” he suggested of his best friend’s wilderness years. “Once he had done that movie and it was received really well, he still wasn’t getting acting jobs. So he rewrote The Town and was like, ‘Well, I’ll direct it and be in it’. With Argo, it was another great role, so it was another great two-punch for him.”
Damon wanted to be an actor, and Affleck wanted to be a star, and when it backfired after too many missteps in quick succession, he reinvented himself as an auteur so he could emerge an in-demand performer all over again. It’s funny how the world works, and while he’d rather not have taken that detour in the first place, he was able to reap the rewards that came with his resurgence.
If anything, their initial diversion can be summed up neatly by their individual accolades. Damon has three Oscar nominations, two Bafta nods, and a Golden Globe win from seven nominations for his acting efforts. However, Affleck has one more Oscar in the trophy cabinet, even though his performative abilities have only yielded one nomination apiece from the Baftas and the Globes and none from the Academy.
