Ben Affleck has recalled the “advice” he and Matt Damon received early in their careers that kept them from “working together more”.
While the two Hollywood icons have appeared in several films together, including Good Will Hunting and The Last Duel, Affleck said they “wished” they had done so “more over the years”.
“We fell prey to this idea that, ‘Well, if you don’t individuate your careers and do your own things, people will always associate you together. That will be limiting,’” the Gone Girl star told The Hollywood Reporter.
“That was the advice we got,” Affleck said. “And also just a function of the fact that our goal was to work as actors.”
He explained that the “motivation behind making Good Will Hunting was to serve as an acting reel” so they could land acting jobs, “not because we wanted to be writers”.
“So when we became successful and had the opportunity to do movies, we took them,” Affleck said.
“The phone could stop ringing at any time, and especially where Matt and I grew up pretty modestly, it was almost irresponsible to not take a job where they were going to pay you a lot of money.”
Now, after more than 40 years of friendship and working in the business, Affleck and Damon are starting a production company together – Artists Equity.
Affleck will return to the director’s seat for the company’s first film Air, which will tell the story of how basketball legend Michael Jordan and his family teamed up with a group of Nike executives to revolutionise the sports business with one historical sneaker deal.
Strangely, the movie will not show Jordan’s face. Instead, they hired a body double who they only filmed from behind or in profile – a decision that Affleck said “worked better” for the movie.
Elsewhere in the interview, the two-time Oscar-winner fervently confirmed he would “absolutely not” direct a DC movie, citing his “heartbreaking” experience leading the 2017 Justice League as Batman.
Air releases in cinemas on 5 April, before it premieres worldwide on Amazon’s Prime Video.
