Matt Damon recently said on the “Radio Times Podcast” (via People) that he “can’t imagine” having to deal with the scrutiny from the press that his friend and longtime collaborator Ben Affleck has faced over the years. Damon noted the two actors have had “parallel careers in a lot of ways,” breaking through with their shared “Good Will Hunting” Oscar win before headlining franchises and major studio movies.
“I’ve been really lucky in that way … especially when I look at Casey’s brother, Ben,” Damon said. “I can’t imagine living under that kind of scrutiny. And it’s been like that for 25 years and we’ve had parallel careers in a lot of ways and so I’m fortunate to have been kind of excused from that part of [it].”
While their careers followed a similar path, their personal lives did not. Damon credits his “boring” marriage (to Luciana Barroso) as a major reason the Hollywood press has remained less intrusive in his life compared to Affleck, whose relationship with Jennifer Lopez continues to feed the tabloid machine.
“That magazine culture that was so huge … 25 years ago, kind of ignored me,” Damon added. “Right, like a guy who’s married, it’s so boring. What would sell those things were scandal and sex and all that stuff … and as long as you didn’t do any of that stuff it wasn’t really worth their time to wait to take your picture, and so I ended up kind of getting left alone.”
Damon added that fame is a “bizarre, disorienting feeling,” adding: “I just wanted to get to work, and so I kind of hid for a few years while I got my bearings. Luckily I fell in love with someone who was not in the business who would tolerate that side of it, and that really helped me.”
Damon and Affleck have helped one another survive fame and various career experiences throughout the years. For instance, Affleck revealed to Entertainment Weekly in 2022 that Damon played a key role in getting him to reshape his career following the rock-bottom experience of working on “Justice League.”
“I had a really nadir experience around ‘Justice League’ for a lot of different reasons,” Affleck told Damon for EW. “Not blaming anybody, there’s a lot of things that happened. But really what it was is that I wasn’t happy. I didn’t like being there. I didn’t think it was interesting. And then some really shitty things, awful things happened. But, that’s when I was like, I’m not going to do that anymore.”
“I talked to you about it and you were a principal influence on that decision,” Affleck said to Damon. “I want to do the things that would bring me joy. Then we went and did ‘Last Duel’ and I had fun every day on this movie. I wasn’t the star, I wasn’t likable. I was a villain. I wasn’t all the things I thought I was supposed to be when I started out, and yet it was a wonderful experience. And it was all just stuff that came along that I wasn’t chasing.”
Affleck and Damon most recently shared the screen in last year’s “Air” and have a handful of film projects in development together, including “RIP,” a new Netflix thriller from writer and director Joe Carnahan, and a movie that tackles Hulk Hogan’s infamous legal battle against Gawker. Gus Van Sant is set to direct the latter project, reuniting the two with their “Good Will Hunting” filmmaker.
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