The movie role that “fulfilled an adolescent fantasy” for Ben Affleck
Even during his childhood, Ben Affleck wanted to be an actor, and along with fellow Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School student and friend Matt Damon, he set about trying to make his dreams come true. However, it wasn’t until a considerable amount of time into Affleck’s adult career that he managed to fulfil a teenage acting fantasy.
Affleck’s younger years had been spent acting in the likes of The Dark End of the Street and The Voyage of Mimi, but though he had indeed appeared in front of the camera, he did not have the kind of career beginnings of being driven around from audition to audition. Rather, the future Gone Girl and Good Will Hunting actor had to go about it the hard way.
Eventually, as Affleck entered his adulthood, bigger roles started to come, including a memorable one in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, plus further jobs in the likes of Mallrats and Chasing Amy. Following the release of Good Will Hunting and a handful of roles in Armageddon, Pearl Harbour and Dogma, it was clear that Affleck was going to be a star.
In 2003, the actor was graced with the opportunity to star in a John Woo movie by the name of Paycheck. Based on the 1953 short story of the same name by Philip K Dick, the film also starred Uma Thurman, Aaron Eckhart and Paul Giamatti and continued to establish Affleck as a viable leading man around the same time he had starred in the oft-derided Daredevil.
Paycheck saw Affleck play Michael Jennings, a talented reverse engineer who is well-paid by huge corporations to uncover the workings of their competitors’ products. However, after completing the job, Jennings’ memory is erased, and after reverse engineering a secret government device, he is suddenly chased down by a number of dangerous adversaries, though the memory erasure leaves him not knowing why.
Speaking with the BBC, Affleck once pointed out how excited he had been by the prospect of working with John Woo. “I had been a fan of John Woo’s since the first movie of his I saw,” the actor admitted. “I can’t remember if it was The Killer or Hard Boiled first, but I’ve had these posters of those movies ever since. It was an opportunity for me to work with someone who I have admired for many years, who I think is personally responsible in a lot of ways for elevating the way action movies are made.”
Affleck said that working with Woo, who had made a handful of American movies including Face/Off and Mission: Impossible 2 just before Paycheck, was an “easy decision”. Having admired the legendary Hong Kong director for much of his early years as a cinephile, there was something fitting about Affleck being able to feature in the lead role for him.
“Getting to be in an actual John Woo movie – that, by itself, was a big deal for me,” Affleck had added. “And doing that action stuff definitely fulfils an adolescent fantasy.” Affleck always wanted to act, but as a teenager, he could only have dreamed about the prospect of one day being able to star in a John Woo movie. Sure, Paycheck might not be the best John Woo movie, nor the best Ben Affleck movie, but it was a moment of pure gratification for the legendary Hollywood actor.
