Although Ben Affleck has made headlines over the years for his A-list romantic partners,
the one true constant in his life has always been his relationship with Matt Damon.
The two superstars rose to fame together thanks to their work on Good Will Hunting, which
won them a shared Oscar for best screenplay, and they've remained best buddies ever since.
Their journey to lifelong friendship began long before they were thrust into the mainstream,
so let's take a look at how they became such a power couple in Hollywood.
Tinseltown in Beantown
Ben and Matt were still pretty young when the world fell in love with their frenetic
thank you speeches on the awards season circuit, but the two had already been pals for nearly
two decades by that point.
Ben was eight and Matt was 10 when they first met, and they grew up in the same neighborhood
in Massachusetts.
What really drew them together was their passion for performance.
"That bonded us for life, I think."
Ben initially pulled ahead of his pal by starring in films like Dazed and Confused and Mallrats,
but he still credits Matt with first inspiring him to take his interest in filmmaking seriously
in their youth.
Ben told Parade Magazine:
"Before Matt, I was by myself.
Acting was a solo activity where I'd just go off and do something, act in a little TV
show or something, and no one understood it.
All of a sudden I had this friend, Matt, and he gets it and wants to do it and thinks it's
interesting and wants to talk about it.
Soon both of us are doing it."
Soon they started tag-teaming auditions together as teens.
Partners in screen time
Although Matt Damon would later set out for a Harvard education while Ben Affleck invested
all of his energy into a future in acting, the two still seriously joined forces to go
out for potential parts.
They were so collaborative about the process that they even pooled their early earnings
from local commercials into a shared bank account so that they could afford travel fare
for auditions.
Damon remembered that they were still dreaming big even then, saying:
"We used to have business lunches together in high school when we had no business to
talk about."
Soon enough, though, Ben's luck would start to improve and he managed to get the ball
rolling a bit on his career by securing an agent.
So Matt, who was still in college at the time, turned to his friend for help doing the same.
"I got to be friends with Matt and he was like, 'You have an agent?
I want an agent.!"
Naturally, Ben obliged, and soon after, Matt also started earning more gigs like a part
in the TV movie The Rising Son and School Ties, and that's when things took a turn for
the better for both of them.
Making a movie
If you look closely at the crowd shots in Field of Dreams, you might see Ben Affleck
and Matt Damon starring their first shared silver screen adventure.
And they can also be seen sharing the screen in School Ties.
Soon after that, though, Matt took temporary leave of his education and moved to LA to
appear in the movie Geronimo.
He lived on Ben's couch, and brought along a script he'd been working on from school,
and decided to team up with his long-time partner once again on the project.
Ben told Boston Magazine,
"Matt said, 'Look, will you help me write this?
I'm not sure what it is or where to go.'
So we started writing it sort of back and forth."
They had ample time to work on the project because their professional projects were few
and far between at the time.
As Ben told Today:
"We were unemployed and we weren't writing the script on a deadline either.
Nobody was expecting it, so we were just these two idiots in our basement writing this thing."
They then presented it to a producer they had worked with on Glory Daze, and things
got into gear with making Good Will Hunting happen for the talented twosome.
But it would still be years before the reels ever started turning on their passion project.
Spinning wheels
It might've seemed like Ben Affleck and Matt Damon were overnight sensations when Good
Will Hunting finally hit theaters in 1997, but the duo had to practice extreme patience
to see the project through.
The two initially got ahead of themselves when it came to their salaries from the script
sell.
As Ben remembers it,
"It was printed in Daily Variety that we were going to get $600,000 on it.
We had no credit, so we went to rent this house that was $3,000 a month, and we used
a copy of the Daily Variety to get the place…
We thought $600,000 would take care of us for 20 years, so we rented nicer apartments
and each bought Jeep Cherokees.
And we were completely broke in a year."
It took several years for the film to finally reach a production stage due to rewrites and
a crucial studio shift from Castle Rock to Miramax, during which time they even relocated
back to Boston.
But once their acting careers started taking flight, the movie finally got into motion,
and the two were finally on their way to the big time.
Onward and upward
Although Ben Affleck and Matt Damon shared the screen quite a bit in their early career
days, most of their collaborations of late seem to be behind-the-scenes.
According to Matt, though, there's an unfortunate reason we haven't seen something new from
the two lately.
He explained:
"I'd love to work with Ben.
The problem with Ben is every time he directs a movie he gives himself the best role in
it, so until he's willing to give up the best role to one of his friends we're not going
to get on with it."
Even so, Matt has never shied away from stepping up to defend his friend.
He told The Hollywood Reporter,
"There's nobody who's more misunderstood [than Ben Affleck].
Ten years ago, the public image of him could not have been farther apart from who he actually
is.
It was like he was being cast in a role, that he was a talentless kind of meathead..
It was painful to be his friend, because it wasn't fair."
Suffice it to say, even decades after each became household names, Ben Affleck and Matt
Damon are clearly still just as inseparable, and no amount of fame or fortune will change
that.
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