There was a time when Ben Affleck was known as more than just the dashing Hollywood leading man who married women called Jennifer. He has, for one thing, also been the public and avowed best friend of that other Hollywood leading man, Matt Damon.
Earlier this week, taking a stroll down memory lane, Affleck sat down for a candid interview with GQ where he dissected his most beloved (and some not so beloved) films. Because after all, for those of us who are not Damon or either of the Jennifers that Affleck has been romantically linked with, the man will simultaneously be synonymous as Daredevil, a an ill-at-ease husband in Gone Girl, and the bewildered actor who genuinely questioned why the plot of Armageddon involved training oil riggers to become astronauts instead of teaching astronauts how to drill a hole. In his own words, through the lens of GQ, here are some of his highlights.
On faking genius
It was Affleck’s partnership with Damon for the screenplay of Good Will Hunting, in which he plays a supporting role opposite his best friend that led to one of cinema’s most iconic mathematical geniuses: Will. As in, the brilliant but troubled young man, Will Hunting. Good or otherwise.
“As far as I know, neither Matt nor I are geniuses, so getting into the mind of a genius wasn’t going to be literally or even metaphorically possible,” began Affleck. “The idea of a character who has special abilities is very appealing. It’s at the root of every superhero film.”
Damon’s Will is a janitor at MIT, where, to ward off boredom, he solves an equation left out for students. For Affleck, Will’s janitorial role was a key aspect of his character. “My father had that job at Harvard,” shared Affleck. “He was a janitor. At the time, I, like a lot of young people or maybe older people, really wanted my dad to be a hero.”
Having paid homage to his father, Affleck returned to the crux of the problem at hand: inhibiting the mind of a genius.
“Part of the trick is to not have to show the whole thing, but to sort of have to hint at it,” he explained. “Matt and I couldn’t even name the kind of math he was doing. We really just faked it.”
It was either faking it or outsourcing the work – a strategy both Damon and Affleck ruthlessly employed by placing blind trust in the brains of others. “When we had to have elaborate sophisticated mathematical solutions, we called on people who could do that,” noted Affleck. “We had mathematicians at MIT who did stuff for us and you know, they could have totally made it up.”
Asking the right questions
In addition to Good Will Hunting, there was at least one other film where Affleck got to interact with bonafide brainiacs: Armageddon.
