The role Ben Affleck considered quitting: “An incredibly agonising, painful, miserable experience”
Although it might be reasonable to assume actors know exactly what they’re getting themselves into when they sign on for a project, they don’t fully understand what they’re in for until they dive in with both feet. For Ben Affleck, it was a shock to the system that left him contemplating quitting altogether.
The two-time Academy Award winner has made a lot of bad movies in his career, and he’d be the first to admit it. In fact, it was because he could admit it that he managed to reinvent himself as an acclaimed auteur after Affleck conceded that the only way to avoid his career becoming permanently consigned to the scrap heap was to take charge of it himself.
Of course, it didn’t stop him from returning to the sort of effects-heavy nonsense that had done him no favours in the first place, but he appeared to permanently draw a line under his blockbuster forays after enduring one of the worst moments of his professional life during the Joss Whedon-helmed reshoots of Zack Snyder’s comic book extravaganza Justice League.
The main difference between Affleck and platonic life partner Matt Damon following their breakthrough Oscar win for Good Will Hunting was that the latter sought out the best directors to test himself as an actor, whereas the former chased movie stardom. It worked in fits and bursts, even if there was a Daredevil for every Armageddon and a Gigli for every Changing Lanes.
Affleck’s second feature with director Michael Bay may have been an Oscar-winning box office hit, but it also landed the leading man on the Razzies shortlist for ‘Worst Actor’. A hamfisted romantic drama that was cynically seeking to be Titanic for World War II and missed the mark by miles, the actor admitted that he was ready to walk away before principal photography had even started.
Describing the military boot camp that put the cast through their paces as “horrible,” Affleck admitted that “it was an incredibly agonising, painful, miserable experience, and I would have definitely quit, like the first day, if I just wouldn’t have been too embarrassed to have to get out.”
Even after he’d decided to persevere with the training and made it onto the set, things didn’t get any rosier for Affleck. He had a pre-existing relationship with Bay after they’d worked together on Armageddon, but that was just as much of a curse as it was a blessing.
Co-star Josh Hartnett revealed to GQ that “Ben took some of the brunt of Michael’s unhappiness at times when things would go wrong,” but “he took it easy on me” by comparison. Was it worth it in the end? Not really, because Pearl Harbor wasn’t very good, but being branded a quitter would have been a much worse look for Affleck when he was still viewed as a star firmly on the rise.
