#chris boldt

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He was buff. He was bad. He was dressed head to toe in tight red leather. And he hardly broke a sweat dangling from a ledge 10 stories above downtown L.A. without a safety net. No wonder Ben Affleck attracted crowds of adoring females when he did his own stunt work for his upcoming action film Daredevil. “We all swooned,” says his costar Jennifer Garner. “He’s your basic tall, dark and handsome. He’s it. You want him to save you. I can’t imagine anyone the world would rather see swoop in and save the day than Ben.”

Being a superhero takes more than good looks—and the same goes for being crowned this year’s Sexiest Man Alive. “Ben’s really loyal and really honest, really smart, really funny,” says Matt Damon, Affleck’s best buddy since boyhood. “He’s got more going for him than just about anyone I’ve ever met.”

The 30-year-old actor is also intriguingly complex. In private that big-screen big hunk (he’s 6’2″) displays impressive range: An easygoing charmer. A passionate political activist. An Oscar winner. A devoted son. A self-aware grownup. A flirt. A brainiac. A goofball. A head-over-heels romantic.

And—perhaps you’ve heard—husband-to-be to a certain Jennifer Lopez. Despite the hullabaloo over the joined-at-the-lips stars’ flashy four-month courtship—and much public clucking over Lopez’s short-lived pair of previous marriages—those close to Affleck applaud the engagement. “They understand each other,” says his mother, Chris, 59, a Cambridge, Mass., fifth-and sixth-grade teacher. “She’s just a lovely person. She’s very connected to her family. She’s very warm. She’s like the ideal daughter-in-law. The only downside is that she is so famous, but on the other hand, so is Ben, and who’s going to put up with that if they’re not in that same world?”

Meanwhile Affleck’s move into the world of commitment marks an important milestone for the never-wed star, who stepped out with the likes of Shoshanna Lonstein and Famke Janssen following the 1999 breakup of his intense romance with Gwyneth Paltrow. “Recently he has matured a lot,” says his mother. “It’s no longer ‘I’m in love, but I’m young,’ it’s ‘I want to make a life now, I’m ready for this.’ ” Before Lopez came on the scene, recalls Daredevil director Mark Steven Johnson, “I used to joke with him about how he was going to be in his 50s hitting on 18-year-old girls. He laughed and said, ‘No, I won’t.’ ” As Affleck himself told Good Morning America in April, “What’s going to mean the most to me [is] being a father, being a husband, being a person of whom I can really be proud.”

Over the years his charm has attracted plenty of hopefuls. “Chicks gravitate to him,” says longtime pal Kevin Smith, director of Affleck and Lopez’s upcoming Jersey Girl. “The word on the street is that he’s the ideal man, chatty, gorgeous, generous and intelligent.” Affleck’s friend and Daredevil costar Michael Clarke Duncan thinks Ben’s secret is simple: “If you can get a woman to laugh, no matter how much money you have, no matter how much charisma you have, you can have that woman, and Ben can do that. He’s not this stuck-up guy who you can’t talk to.”

On movie sets Affleck is known for his eagerness to chew the fat with anyone from electricians to camera operators. “He’s a hugger,” says Phil Alden Robinson, who directed him in this summer’s The Sum of All Fears. “He loves being around people, and consequently he makes them happy. You can’t fake that kind of warmth.”

Then there’s plain old brains, that attractive but all too rare accessory to brawn and a $350,000 Bentley. “Ben has this nerdy smart-guy side to him,” says Liv Tyler, his love interest in 1998’s Armageddon. “He’s obsessed with the New York Times crossword puzzle. He reads a lot. He’s really interested in knowing more about the world.” The die-hard Democrat’s homework shows in his dedication to causes, from stumping for Al Gore across the country to urging Harvard University to raise wages for blue-collar employees. At a rally at the university in 2000, Affleck and Damon addressed a crowd of more than 500. “They spoke very passionately,” says noted historian and author Howard Zinn, a fellow speaker, “Ben talked about how his father had worked at Harvard at a menial job [like Matt Damon‘s Good Will Hunting character, Tim Affleck, 59, labored as a custodian from 1988 to 1990] and how he understood what it was like to work for an enormously rich corporation and get a pittance.”

Tim and Chris (who separated when Ben was 11 and later divorced) raised Benjamin Geza Affleck and his brother Casey, 27, in a working-class neighborhood in Cambridgeport, Mass. A rambunctious, outgoing youngster, Ben “was very good at imitating people, even when he was 3 or 4,” says Chris, who still lives in the blue clapboard house her sons grew up in (although Ben bought her a summer home on Cape Cod). By 7, he was an avid reader, Little League baseball player and budding actor. Dark End of the Street, an independent film directed by a family friend, marked his movie debut in 1979—and the first time Affleck would be smitten by his leading lady. “He had an appropriate 7-year-old crush on the 19-year-old girl” who played his big sister, recalls Affleck’s childhood acting coach David Wheeler. At 9, Ben landed a role in an educational series, The Voyage of the Mimi. “He was very bright and intensely curious,” says Wheeler.

And soon he became just a bit devilish. Thanks to his acting gigs (including a Burger King commercial and the 1987 miniseries Hands of a Stranger), “he was adept at age 13 or 14 at dealing with adults,” says Gerry Speca, his drama teacher at Cambridge Rindge and Latin public high school. “When he had to, he could turn on the charm. Like the Eddie Haskell syndrome.” Unbeknownst to his mother, Ben sweet-talked bank tellers into letting him withdraw earnings that she was socking away in a college fund. Affleck was more of a partyer than was his neighbor Damon, two years older and a pal since 1980. But the two “weren’t heartthrobs by any means,” says Damon’s brother Kyle, 35. “They weren’t even considered cool kids. They were drama geeks.”

Affleck—who grew almost a foot his junior year of high school—attended his 1990 prom with a group of friends. He met his first serious girlfriend, Cheyenne Rothman, now 30, at summer camp when they were teens; their relationship would continue on and off over the next seven years. The following fall Affleck headed to the University of Vermont. (He applied to Harvard but was rejected despite high SAT scores.) He dropped out after one semester to head for Hollywood. “I would always say, ‘Oh, Ben, you shouldn’t do this. You should go to college,’ ” says his mother. “But secretly I sort of suspected that he was going to make it.”

She was right. Roles in 1993’s Dazed and Confused and 1995’s Mallrats raised Affleck’s profile as he and Damon, crashing with two other roommates in a cluttered apartment, labored on the Hunting screenplay. “He had a hard time getting cast as anything but the biggish bully type,” recalls Kevin Smith, who directed Mallrats. “I had some producer try to talk me out of casting Ben in Chasing Amy [1997] because he was ‘too big’ to be a romantic leading man. But I figured, if I’m a guy and I can see what a catch this dude is, there’ve gotta be women out there who’d agree.”

Then Hunting sold for $600,000. On the first day on the set “Matt and Ben cried,” says coproducer Chris Moore, a longtime Affleck pal. “They had believed in it so much.” With his mom as his date—”It was such a rush,” she says—Affleck picked up the Best Original Screenplay Oscar in 1998 alongside his best friend.

Hollywood quickly saw Affleck’s beefcake potential. For Armageddon, director Michael Bay got a dentist to cap his teeth and hired a trainer to pump him up. The cameras took over from there. “I remember Ben coming to me one day and saying, ‘You’re not going to believe what happened to me,’ ” recalls costar Liv Tyler. “Basically Michael Bay had just made him stand there and have running water poured over his bare torso. He didn’t even know what scene it was for.”

He also discovered the world of celebrity dating. Sparks flew between Affleck and Gwyneth Paltrow at Good Will Hunting‘s 1997 premiere. The couple were an item on and off for the next two years and remain friendly. “In Gwyneth he found a match of the minds,” his Forces of Nature director Bronwen Hughes said earlier this year.

Affleck found the single life after their breakup action-packed—but unfulfilling. “I felt very adrift,” he told Talk magazine in 2000. “So I thought, ‘Okay, I’ll go to these parties. I’ll try to embrace this life people think I have.’…And I found myself even more miserable.” In July 2001 he made a move that surprised most pals: He checked himself into Promises rehab center in Malibu for treatment for alcoholism. According to friends, his excess drinking was a problem he wanted to tackle early. “I think he figured out, ‘If I keep doing this, I’m going to wind up in a place that I don’t want to be,’ ” says Michael Clarke Duncan. Affleck knew the perils better than most: His father, Tim, now a still-life photographer in Indio, Calif., is a recovering alcoholic who got sober in 1990 with his ex-wife’s help. “I’m proud that he took stock of himself,” says Tim. “And like most things in Ben’s life, whatever he’s decided to undertake, he’s been successful at.”

The experience has changed more than Affleck’s attitude toward partying. “It involved a lot of introspection,” says his mother. “He’s very, very happy right now, really easy to talk to about difficult things,” adds Don Roos, who directed him in 2000’s Bounce. That transformation made it the right time to meet Ms. Right. “When you first get sober, you’re nervous about staying sober and you tend to stay close to home,” says Roos. “I credit Jennifer”—herself a teetotaler—”with being there to open up his life for him again.”

Now, it seems, Lopez, 33, is his sole addiction—unless you count diamonds: Her tokens of affection from Affleck (whose Daredevil salary is $12.5 million) have included a yellow-and-white diamond bracelet and, of course, the 6.10-carat Harry Winston pink diamond ring he gave her when he proposed. In an e-mail to Diane Sawyer, Affleck called Lopez “a truly graceful beauty with an artist’s soul”—and himself “the luckiest man alive.”

The news came as little surprise for director Kevin Smith, who watched the relationship deepen over the past few months during the Jersey Girl shoot. “After day one of watching them in rehearsals, I pulled him aside and said, ‘Within a year,’ ” Smith says. “I know there are a ton of cynics out there, but they haven’t seen these guys together. This isn’t just Nookie Betwixt the Rich and Famous. There’s obscene mutual respect and adoration. They both came from working-class backgrounds that led to these over-the-top career successes. Plus she finds everything he says funny.”

Their jet-set itinerary has included a few unadvertised stops. In August Affleck took Lopez on a tour of his old haunts in South Boston, including a favorite chicken parmigiana joint and a bar featured in Good Will Hunting. They also recently lunched with Affleck’s father at Ben’s new Beverly Hills home, on the property where Drew Barrymore lived before a house fire last year. “I think she’s nifty,” Tim Affleck says of Lopez. “I didn’t see her as a flashy movie star any more than I see my son as a flashy movie star. They’re just a couple of schlub dubs like the rest of us.”

He may be a secret schlub, but Affleck seems comfortable with his celebrity—and savvy about how to leverage it for creative as well as political causes. “Ben is not a guy who is handled by handlers,” says pal Moore, a partner with Affleck, Damon and Sean Bailey in the entertainment company LivePlanet. “He does what he wants.” With LivePlanet, Affleck developed the innovative HBO reality series Project Greenlight and this fall’s critically acclaimed but short-lived ABC drama Push, Nevada.

One crusade close to Affleck’s heart began serendipitously. In 1998 he noticed Joe Kindregan, then 10, in a motorized wheelchair watching him film a scene for Forces of Nature at Dulles Airport near Washington, D.C. Affleck came over to joke with the boy, who suffers from the rare degenerative disease ataxia-telangiectasia. The two struck up an e-mail friendship, and last year Affleck testified before Congress about the need for medical research into the condition. Affleck arranges for Joe and his family to see him about four times a year, including a recent 14th-birthday party on the set of his romantic comedy Gigli in L.A. “They had cheeseburgers and chocolate cake in his trailer,” says Joe’s mother, Suzi, 44, a Springfield, Va., homemaker. “I’ll love Ben forever for the way he puts light in my son’s eyes.”

Moments like that make it easy to envision Affleck doting on a child of his own. “You can just tell he’ll be a fantastic dad,” says Mark Steven Johnson, whom Affleck often quizzed about his experience as a father of three on the Daredevil shoot. “He’s a Boston boy. He wants his kid playing baseball—you know, a Red Sox boy.” Chris Affleck can’t wait. “I’ve been urging him for the longest time,” she says. “I want grandchildren.”

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I'm promoting my movie. in doing so, it is incumbent on me to do an interview for a movie magazine. I've asked the good people at PREMIERE to let me contribute an article rather than be interviewed, in an effort at a little break from the norm. I've run the first draft past the studio whose movie I'm hawking, and they were kind enough to give me some feedback. In general, I believe they found my pithy little attempt at a first-person description of what it's like to actually do publicity and my own idiosyncratic deconstruction of said process mildly amusing. But they had some notes. With those in mind, let me say this: Every man, woman, and child on this earth must drop everything and run to their local multiplex to see Reindeer Games. Well, there might be a title change in the works, so maybe it won't be called Reindeer Games, but pay that no heed! Whatever the marketing folks decide to call the movie, it is absolutely imperative that you see it immediately, two or three times if need be. Watching this movie will make you smarter, more successful, and a (much) better lover. I implore you, for your own sake, pay to see this movie. It is, quite simply, the single greatest dramatic narrative of the modern era.

Now, on to the irrelevant part.

I. A DRIVE-BY

"Affleck, you suck!" was all I made out as a full can of beer sailed by, inches from my head. I believe that was the precise moment I knew things had changed.

It was a drive-by beer-canning—a little-publicized-but-all-too-real hazard for the working actor in L.A. It was June of 1997, somewhere around midnight. I was coming out of a record store on Sunset Strip, and in retrospect, I guess I should have seen it coming.

I hadn't been subject to public stoning by Budweiser since my high school days, in Boston. I remember thinking that in this new context, it was a fairly artless, albeit effective, form of what in acting class we used to call "a critique of the work." That was the first day it occurred to me that there is a side of fame that might be unpleasant. It was a peculiar induction—one Jason Patric has aptly characterized as "baptism by flashbulb"—to a strange club whose membership requirements are simple: People you've never met, seen, or spoken to develop opinions (occasionally quite negative and almost always judgmental) about you, your work, and whether or not you "suck." Though my holy water was alcoholic and carbonated and gunned at me by strangers, I suddenly had an affinity for how Mr. Patric must have felt.

Before Good Will Hunting and Armageddon, I did quite a few movies, but nobody saw them. In fact, the entertainment press corps in general seemed aggressively disinterested. When I went to Atlanta to promote Chasing Amy, I clearly remember that the few journalists who showed up to interview me seemed bored (with me), dejected (at having such a low-rent assignment), and desperate (during the actual interview) for a reason—any reason—to write anything. Later, the movie became a minor cult hit, and occasionally I would be confronted by a stranger or two (oddly, these interactions also tended to happen in record stores). But instead of berating me, these guys usually wanted to know, "Did you really nail that girl?" "Was she really a dyke?" and "Do you have her number?" While deeply flattering, these rare interactions didn't prepare me in the least for what I was to face down the road.

That night, I wondered if perhaps this was something that even the great ones have had to endure, but I could never quite convince myself that there was some rangy teenager standing outside Brando's house, hectoring the deaf masonry with the likes of "Why'd you pimp Kabuki-style gear in Moreau?!" Surely there is a point at which one is accorded some space, respect, and privacy. I just wasn't there yet.

The gangly kid's harangue at a thespian about his play is a fair confusion of character and actor. But the words and pictures that provoked the beer-flinger were not of a character in a film; they were representations of me in the press-specifically the tabloid press, coverage in which I had taken no part. So I decided to become the captain of my own destiny, or at least of my own image. I decided to stop avoiding or passively enduring press coverage; instead, I would start a conversation with the public by engaging the press, thus having control over the words and images representing me.

This was, to put it mildly, a blunder. I had underrated the forces at play in the creation of celebrity media and overrated my own ability to withstand and control them. As if that weren't bad enough, I also discovered that I was my own worst enemy.

It wasn't until my third or fourth interview was published that I began to suspect something. I would run into people who know me fairly well (like my mom) and they'd fix me with an uncertain and dubious stare. I began to anticipate the inevitable: "I read your thing in [insert name of rag here] . . ." Then their voices would trail off. I knew the sentiment. I'd experienced it before. Earlier in my career I'd get that. People would say, "Hey, I saw Phantoms. . . ." Though I understood the comment in the context of a movie where I played a sheriff in Colorado battling an ill-defined but vaguely menacing sewer monster, I didn't see the connection with the interviews. But when I asked my girlfriend what she thought about the mixed reviews I seemed to be getting, she let me have it. "I don't even recognize that person." "Who?" I lamely asked. "The guy in that interview, in any of your interviews . . . Interview Guy."

Sonofabitch. Interview Guy.

What I found when I read back over my own inanities was as phony a frat-boy-chucklehead as you're ever likely to encounter—and someone who, I hope, bears little resemblance to the guy typing out these words. Somehow I'd inadvertently given birth to a monster. Interview Guy liked to come off as a cross between a pseudo-intellectual college sophomore who'd just read his first chapter of Proust, a drunken motorcycle fanatic, and an all-around, aw-shucks-can-you-believe-I'm-just-a-regular-Joe ham bone.

The idea here is to set this gruesome record straight. I'll bring Interview Guy face-to-face with myself. The transparent difference will dissolve Interview Guy; the remaining image will be me. Either that or it'll be another in a long series of publicity disasters. At this point, I don't have much to lose.

II. INTERVIEW GUY

INT. MY HOUSE-DAY: INTERVIEW GUY, 27, bearing a striking resemblance to Ben Affleck, but wearing Prada stretch plastic trousers, comes running into the room with a beer. He does a handstand, slams his beer, and slouches into the sofa. Ben Affleck, a.k.a. ACTUAL BEN, sits across from him. Actual Ben is not nearly as good-looking as Interview Guy and seems a little taken aback.

INTERVIEW GUY: I take Viagra and I think the kids should try it at home, the little ones! [Interview Guy runs around the room twice, then heads outside. After a beat, he comes crashing back through the door on a motorcycle. He wipes out.]

INTERVIEW GUY: (Cont'd) [Re: motorcycle] I'll get another one. [Re: nothing in particular] Acting is a journey, right bro?

ACTUAL BEN: Not really. Most of the time it seems like a gigantic press junket, where I talk about my "arc" and decry the invasive nature of the press in my life—then go and have my woes translated into Korean and beamed via satellite to Asia. [A beat]

[There is another awkward beat.]

ACTUAL BEN: (Cont'd) Are you unable to smile or behave normally when having your picture taken? I mean, do you have a particular aversion to looking normal, or are you satisfying some innate urge to look like an idiot?

INTERVIEW GUY: Hey, man, I'm just a regl'r guy who likes to have fun-

ACTUAL BEN: Also, in your photographs you seem to clench your jaw, squint your eyes, and suck in your cheeks. Is something wrong with you physically? Do you have TMJ?

INTERVIEW GUY: [Flushing red] I . . . That's my strong, leading-man jawline and laser intensity coming through. . . . I can't help that! That's not on purpose. . . .

ACTUAL BEN: This isn't going anywhere; let's go to the questions. . . .

[Ed Note: During this segment of the interview, both Interview Guy and Actual Ben have agreed to answer a list of prepared questions. A tape recorder was placed in the room, and the following is a verbatim transcript of their answers.]

QUESTION: What is your favorite magazine?

INTERVIEW GUY: Maxim . . . no PREMIERE! This is for PREMIERE, right?

ACTUAL BEN: I don't have a favorite.

QUESTION: Who is your favorite actor?

INTERVIEW GUY: Arnold, Sly, your mom . . . just playin', guy. . . .

ACTUAL BEN: Morgan Freeman, Denzel Washington, Benicio Del Toro, Sean Penn, Meryl Streep, Cole Hauser, Casey Affleck, Jay Lacopo, Vince Vaughn, Joaquin Phoenix, Don Cheadle, the brothers Wilson, Ed Norton, Nicolas Cage, Robert De Niro, Marlon Brando, Zeljko Ivanek, Dennis Franz, Julianne Moore, Steve Buscemi, Frances McDormand—there are really a ton of actors I think are great and whom I admire. And I honestly believe after seeing The Talented Mr. Ripley and All the Pretty Horses that Matt Damon is one of, if not the, finest young actor around.

INTERVIEW GUY: That Ripley thing, that's a gay picture, right?

ACTUAL BEN: Well, no, it's not. . . .

QUESTION: In the wake of the massacre at Columbine High School, there has been greater scrutiny on the level of senseless and gratuitous violence in movies. What role do you think movie violence plays in influencing real people, and what is the responsibility of filmmakers and actors?

INTERVIEW GUY: I'm so sick of that question. Some idiot kid who played too much Mortal Kombat and can't get a girlfriend decides to shoot up his school . . . that's not Sylvester Stallone's fault for making Cobra. The guy was trying to make a kickass Marion Cobretti biker picture. Forget about teaching masturbation in schools; they ought to hand out twenty bucks and a map to Korea town. You get yourself a little massage-parloring down there, you feel a lot less inclined to blow up your lunchroom!

ACTUAL BEN: I disagree.

INTERVIEW GUY: 'Course you disagree; you smoke cock.

ACTUAL BEN: No, I don't "smoke cock," I just think there is some responsibility to be had by those of us who have some impact over the content of movies and how violence is presented. Doubtless, there is blame aplenty to go around. But the exploitation of mindless violence for the sake of titillation, without any attention paid to the genuine trauma that real violence does cause, is irresponsible.

QUESTION: What qualities and/or attributes do you find attractive in a woman? What would your "ideal woman" be like?

ACTUAL BEN: I can't say I have any one "type." I have dated and been attracted to all kinds of women. I tend to be able to look past first impressions and am usually attracted to a woman whom I like and want to be around. No matter how "hot" some woman is, I'd find her very unattractive if I couldn't stand to have a conversation with her.

INTERVIEW GUY: You done, Jake-O? Okay. That's bullshit. Everybody goes by appearances. I got nothing against the homely broad, I just don't care to give her a jump, you follow me? As far as what type of chick I most like, I'd say I'm your basic, red-blooded, Claudia Schiffer-Pam Anderson type of guy. And, you know, her beaver doesn't have to be shaved but . . . I don't mind it!

[Ed. Note: There is a five-minute segment of the tape where Interview Guy runs around the room, high-fiving no one in particular and repeating porn dialogue to the tune of the theme song from Martin. Finally, he cracks open a beer and sits back down.]

QUESTION: Are movies important?

INTERVIEW GUY: I think they can be. You go see Anaconda and you know you can't take a river trip with Owen Wilson, a rapper, and the guy from Deliverance, 'cause it's gonna end badly. So that's a public-health message, in a way. Fuck, come to think of it, that was the second bad rafting experience for Jon Voight. There's a fucker you really don't want on your Outward Bound crew. . . .

ACTUAL BEN: No.

QUESTION: Can you define your relationship with Gwyneth Paltrow?

INTERVIEW GUY: Well, she's my friend. She's very smart, very sweet, really just a good, decent person, and someone I both respect and admire. She's also a dynamite actress. As it happens, we just did a movie together called Bounce, which will be out in summer 2000 at a theater near you.

[Ed. Note: At this point there is a second lengthy pause on the tape and sounds of a struggle. Then nothing. It's the Blair Witch of Books on Tape. . . .]

III. BEING SEAN PENN

There's a reason that the National Enquirer has the highest circulation of any paper in the country. People like it. And people like it because, despite what most actors tend to imagine the general public is fascinated by (i.e., every subtlety and nuance of their latest performance), it concerns that very thing that drives most people to the movies in the first place: sex. And not just sex but gossip-who is having it with whom, who's been jilted, who gets the kids, who's getting above their station, who threw a fit on their show and fired a bunch of people. All of it. The movie business has become a kind of ongoing soap opera. The same characters move from one story to another, augmented by bits of background titillation from newspapers and magazines, and people go to see how the latest installment in the Schwarzenegger serial will turn out. Therefore, it should be no surprise to actors that their private lives seem inexorably entwined with whatever perception people have of their performances, and vice versa. In fact, that gossip, that tabloid fodder, is an organic part of the perceptions people have when they go to the movies.

The majority of famous actors are not famous because of roles they've played. The random passerby, when asked, will tell you they've heard of a particular actor but will have difficulty naming more than one or two movies he's been in. What people do see, far more than the movies, are the television shows and magazines in which actors promote their films. This creates a strange dynamic, where celebrity becomes the goal, publicity the means, and the actual work takes a distant backseat.

If one takes for granted that the goal of an actor is to assume the identity of another person, then doing publicity as oneself seems absolutely the wrong thing to do. The less people know about you, the less apt they are to project some preconception onto your performance. There are actors who seem to understand this conundrum and have managed to deal with it in a sensible way.

There are powerful forces at work that compel an actor, after appearing in a movie or two, to whore out every last detail of their gonorrhea treatments, incestuous experiments with grandma, shock therapy, and the time they had one too many and got a five-dollar hand job in T.J. And later the same bunch that threw you to the press will tell you not to give so much away. You can't win.

So what, then, is the lesson? I really don't know. You can lie to the press (my brother, Casey, once told Interview magazine that he had a Ph.D. in eugenics from Columbia), you can bullshit a little (whereupon your friends from home tell you you've changed and you're full of shit, and you're mom is ashamed of you), you can go ahead and talk about the "touching game" you played with Uncle Ted (and then your mom really is ashamed of you). Or you can go the route of the dignified and be Sean Penn. Just watch out for the backlash—it gets ugly.

Whenever I've run this theory past the cocktail-party crowd, the response is always a Pollyannaish "What's wrong with the truth?" Or "Just be yourself!" Now, while that may be sound and novel advice, in this case it misses the mark, for two reasons. First, after you've had to distort and misrepresent yourself for every producer in town (e.g., like the time you had to pluck every emotional chord you've got to muster up some semblance of passion for your Beverly Hills 90210 crying-scene audition), you hardly know who or what the real you is anymore. Second, no one really wants to "be themselves" in public. We are reluctant to expose ourselves even to friends, much less to a jaded public with an eye for scandal and an unquenchable thirst for hubris and its attendant fall. So I, like every other sensible person thrust into (or thrusting themselves toward) the glare of the public eye, tried to project an improved version of myself. Big mistake.

Before anyone imagines that this is some kind of lamentation of a great evil in the world, let me say this: Any actor who has had any success whatsoever ought to count his lucky stars that he turns over enough bread for the Enquirer to even consider including him on the "worst dressed" list. Clearly, successful actors (and particularly those who, even for a fleeting moment, are anointed "movie stars") enjoy wealth, power, and privilege wildly beyond their station. We should take what we get and like it—I don't contest that. I do, however, find the situation of "promoting" myself and my movies curious and contradictory.

But in the end, it is probably not worth deconstructing. It's a pretty straightforward thing: Talk to somebody, brag on your movie some, and hope that a few more people go to see it because they're intrigued with what they've read. And, hey, maybe they've gotten to know the actor a little better. In that spirit, let me end where I began: Who I am, and why you should see my movie.

I'm somebody who probably has too many mirrors in his house, but doesn't much like what he sees when he looks into them. I try to be generous, try to be kind, and try to remember how lucky I've been, but I've been known to fall short in all three regards. As far as fame and fortune go, I generally believe one should understand that none of it is deserved, but try to take as much advantage of it as one can in good conscience. I like quiet and the idea of rest, but can't seem to stop moving. I like people (as someone once said), but I hate gatherings. I try to expose myself to diversity, change, and new experiences, but when alone in my car, I end up listening to the same song over and over on the CD player. I know that fame and fortune are fleeting (as Matt recently said in GQ, "the phone stopped ringing for better actors than me"), but I can't help hoping that I can do this forever. I believe in the friends and family I've known since childhood, but I've already lost touch with too many. I love company and the security of love, but most days I feel alone. If I had to choose between being held in high regard by those in the movie business or esteemed by those around me whom I admire, respect, and have known through thick and thin, I'll opt for the latter: a life where people still talk to you even if the phone rings only occasionally, and where your friends don't mind if you haven't made it onto the cover of a flashy movie magazine in quite some time. Oh: And go see the movie I made with John Frankenheimer. It's pretty good.

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Ben Affleck pilots a Jeep Cherokee through the backstreets of Cambridge, Massachusetts. July twilight turns the red brick buildings around Harvard Square a fiery shade of orange. The Mighty, Mighty Bosstones play as Affleck, with his younger brother, Casey, and Matt Damon, gives a guided tour of their childhood haunts: Rocco's Place; the One Thousand and One Plays video arcade; the spot near the Weld Boathouse where a teenage Damon stripped and swam across a river famous for its dirty water; and Hi-Fi Pizza, which was always closing just as Damon and Affleck would show up for a late-night slice. "I was there a few days ago, and the guys behind the counter were, like, 'You're Chasing Amy! You're Chasing Amy!' " says Affleck, doing his best impersonation of the counterman's Indian accent. "And so I say, 'Yes, yes. I am. Now how 'bout a slice?' And they say, 'No, sorry, Mr. Chasing Amy, we're closed.' "

Tree-lined streets give way to the gray stone of the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School's modern campus. As Affleck parks the car by their high school theater, Damon can no longer contain himself. "Say, Ben," he taunts, "why don't you tell us about the time you played the caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland?"

"Yup, I was the zany, hookah-smoking caterpillar," Affleck says, gearing up for a cutting contest. "I chose to play the role wrapped in garbage bags held together by Scotch tape. Now, if I were to play that caterpillar today, I might do it another way."

"It was an underrated performance," says 22-year-old Casey. "Those trash bags were a bold choice."

"So, Matt, why don't you favor us with your version of 'Morning Glory' from Pippin?" says 25-year-old Ben, letting loose a left-right (Bob Fosse-Stephen Schwartz) slight to Damon's virility. Damon holds in his comeback until the Jeep is in motion and they pass his childhood home. Affleck's house is two blocks away, and as boys, he and Damon often walked to school together — even though Damon was two years older.

"Ben used to ring my bell and then cower on the other side of the street, because he was afraid of the little kids at this school right next door," Damon says and flashes a toothy smile as Affleck stops him midsentence.

"This was a delinquent school and all the kids were smoking cigarettes," Affleck says, as he quickly pulls around the corner and arrives at his mom's blue townhouse on Cottage Street. He is hoping to point out his birthplace and be on his way when he is waylaid by his mother, who, unimpressed by the presence of a journalist, wants to know when he plans on returning her Jeep.

"Are you going to be home for dinner?" the sixth-grade public-school teacher asks her son. "Mom, you're banned from talking to the press since you told the story about how I used to play with a Wonder Woman doll," Affleck warns, striding into the kitchen for a hug and a sample of freshly prepared guacamole.

Damon and Affleck could be any pair of twentysomething slackers enjoying a late summer idyll, but by the weekend, the hookah-smoking caterpillar will be heading west to costar with Bruce Willis in the megabuck asteroid movie Armageddon, and Mr. Morning Glory will be on a plane to England, where he will play the title role in Saving Private Ryan, opposite Tom Hanks, adding Steven Spielberg's name to the list of directors (Francis Ford Coppola, Gus Van Sant) with whom he has worked over the past year.

This summer has been a last gasp of childhood for the pair. They recently finished production on Miramax's Good Will Hunting, an ensemble drama Damon and Affleck co-wrote before leaving Harvard and Occidental College, respectively, roughly four years ago. The movie, due out at Christmas and directed by To Die For's Van Sant, is already being touted as Oscar bait. Damon stars as a South Boston juvenile delinquent who works as a janitor at MIT and just happens to be an unschooled mathematics genius; the Affleck brothers play two of his Southie pals; and Robin Williams plays it straight as the shrink who helps Damon's working-class hero realize his potential.

That this pet project should come to fruition with such strong Hollywood backing reflects the sudden industry heat on the young actors' careers. But Damon and Affleck have been together every step of the way — and they depend on each other to keep things real. "There's an emotional core to Good Will Hunting that came from Ben and Matt," says Williams, who plays therapist Sean McGuire with a gravitas similar to that of Dead Poets Society. "They have this unspoken twins thing. They care for each other, yet they bust on each other. And that was a great bass line to work with. I'm very proud of this movie. It has a resonance."

On November 13, 1994, the Good Will Hunting script became the object of an intense bidding war in Hollywood. Damon was living in a shabby two-bedroom house with a buddy from high school. Affleck was sleeping on his sofa, having fled a busted engagement back East. This was long before the actors' careers would simultaneously pick up speed — Affleck's thanks to Chasing Amy and Going All the Way, Damon's with Courage Under Fire and The Rainmaker.

Never during their shared childhood had they imagined that November day's outcome. "When the phone started ringing, we were ready to take the first offer, which was $15,000," Affleck says. "After each call," Damon says, "we were yelling at our agent, Patrick Whitesell, 'Take it! Just take the offer!' Then there was this moment when the phone rang and Patrick picked it up. It was for my roommate, and it was this girl he had dated in college, and my roommate was, like, 'Hey, how are you?' And we were, like, 'Hang the fuckin' phone up!' He was really bummed, because they hadn't talked in three years."

By dusk, Chris Moore, a friend with whom they had developed the script, burst through the door with a bottle of Cristal under his arm — a bottle he had been given when he left agenting and told not to open until his new life as a producer started. Moore popped the cork when Castle Rock's bid came in that evening: The studio offered Damon and Affleck more than $1 million for their script as well as their services as actors. They spent that night drinking at Damon's house.

Getting Good Will Hunting into production was less of a party: The script, director, and studio would all change before it reached the screen. The plot at the time of the sale was more of a thriller, with Will's mathematical powers attracting the unwanted interest of evil government agents. In the beginning, Affleck and Damon also talked about such movies as Ordinary People, Searching for Bobby Fischer, and Midnight Run as touchstones. Castle Rock partner Rob Reiner told them to lose the thriller element and concentrate on the relationship between Will and his psychiatrist. William Goldman, a sachem of the screenwriting trade, coached them as well. Even reclusive director Terrence Malick (Badlands) came out of his shell for a meeting and suggested ways in which Will's love interest, a Harvard med student named Skylar, could become a catalyst for his decision to leave Boston.

Then came the sticking point: Damon and Affleck heard that Castle Rock bigwig Andrew Scheinman wanted to direct. Considering that Scheinman's oeuvre consisted of Little Big League, Damon and Affleck were loath to turn their baby over to him. Rather than force the actors to work with Scheinman, Castle Rock's senior executives took the high road and gave them 90 days to set up the project at another studio. If they failed, the movie would go forward with any director Castle Rock dictated.

Affleck and Damon gave the script to Kevin Smith (director of Clerks and Chasing Amy), who pressed Miramax's cochairman Harvey Weinstein to look at Good Will Hunting as a possible producing vehicle for Smith's View Askew production company. After reading the script, Weinstein made one of Miramax's most expensive purchases at the time, paying Castle Rock slightly more than $1 million for the rights to Good Will Hunting.

Somewhere outside Needles, California, Christmas 1995, Ben Affleck's car phone started chirping. Damon was taking it easy in the passenger seat — still recovering from dropping 40 pounds for his junkie scenes in Courage Under Fire. Affleck, who dreads flying and frequently drives cross-country, was all poise when the voice on the other end said, "You have a meeting with Mel Gibson . . . in New York . . . in two days."

They spent much of the next 48 hours pounding coffee and quoting lines from Mad Max to each other as the Nevada desert faded into the Manhattan skyline. "We got to Miramax's offices just before our lunch," says Damon. "And Harvey tells us, 'Mel Gibson is a great director. You can see that from Braveheart.' And I said, 'Harvey, Ben and I have been working. We haven't seen it yet.' So without missing a beat, the head of Miramax sits there and says, 'Okay: Scotland, William Wallace.' And he told us the whole movie."

Gibson's involvement had a catch: He was just starting Ransom and would not be available for nearly a year, so Good Will Hunting would have to wait. Recalls Damon, "Mel was totally understanding when we said, 'This movie is our life. And we know you're, like, the biggest star in the world. But we need a decision.' '' He shudders now at the cockiness of it all. Gibson bowed out after two weeks.

Meanwhile, Van Sant had gotten his hands on the script and contacted Damon through Casey Affleck, who had appeared in To Die For. "I was attracted to the notion of Will trying to create a family," Van Sant says, observing that his movies (Drugstore Cowboy, My Own Private Idaho) have often depicted street kids struggling to forge an alternative home for themselves. Van Sant also started talking about the project with Williams, whom he knew slightly from years before, when the two were developing a biopic about slain gay San Francisco politician Harvey Milk.

Cambridge's Bow and Arrow pub has been dutifully re-created in a forgotten Toronto gin mill on a June morning. Affleck and actor Cole Hauser, who worked together in Dazed and Confused and School Ties, are in character as Chuckie and Billy, two Southies who have invaded a Harvard bar for the night. They play pop-a-shot basketball in one corner. "Brick!" yells Hauser in his best Bean Town accent. "Larry," coos Affleck as he emulates the last white Celtic legend's jump shot. Damon, as Will Hunting, sits with Casey Affleck, whose character, Morgan, completes the quartet of friends. They stare as Skylar, played by British actress Minnie Driver, approaches Will for the first time. The scene is meant to be a little cool, but neither Damon nor Driver can suppress grins. They furtively hold hands between setups. Damon, who in his brief career has earned a reputation as an on-set smoothie (after hooking up with The Rainmaker's Claire Danes), has struck again. The camera rolls and Skylar offers Will a crumpled piece of paper. "Here's my number," Driver says. "Maybe we could go out for coffee sometime?"

"Great, or maybe we could go somewhere and just eat a bunch of caramels," Damon says. "It's just as arbitrary as drinking coffee." Their eyes meet. The actors beam.

"Matt wasn't prepared for such a powerhouse acting against him," says producer Lawrence Bender of Driver, who auditioned by reading a love scene with Damon at New York's Soho Grand Hotel. "It was a scene where Will tells Skylar, 'I don't love you.' Matt literally had to stop the audition, apologize, and start over. There were five guys in the room and nobody wanted to look at one another because we had tears in our eyes."

Regardless of the extracurricular role she plays in Damon's life, Driver has become an expert at infiltrating close circles of male friends; she worked with Stanley Tucci and his screenwriter cousin Joseph Tropiano on Big Night, and played the chick-of-the-flick in Grosse Point Blank, which John Cusack wrote with longtime friends D.V. DeVincentis and Steve Pink. "[Being the girl] in these groups has meant that I've been allowed to do whatever I like," Driver says in her trailer as Damon and Affleck make catcalls from the curb. "Because all of these men have said, 'We've never got her quite right. We need you to fill in the blanks.' " Minnie and Matt — their names could be the title of a forgotten Cassavetes script — were together during the summer while she was shooting a period drama in England and Scotland called The Governess and Damon was soldiering for Spielberg in England. But it's hard to tell whether a Bogart- Bacall To Have and Have Not kind of magic filters onto the screen in Good Will Hunting.

"There's a rosiness that comes through, but that can be deceiving," Van Sant says. "A lot of times if you are told something before you see the film, you might convince yourself something's there when it actually turns out to be the opposite."

Stars' personal lives are a squeamish topic for the director, but not nearly as squeamish as the donnybrook he got into with Good Will Hunting producer Bender, a longtime Quentin Tarantino associate who was handed the movie by Miramax. Since Damon, Affleck, and Van Sant had already gelled by the time Bender came on the project, the tight-knit group viewed him as an interloper. And according to several of the principals, Van Sant told Bender during a preproduction meeting, "You don't have a creative bone in your body, and I just want to punch you in your face." Van Sant then called the leads into his hotel room and demanded that Bender make assurances to the group about creative control. Van Sant and Bender agree that the contretemps was mostly about staking out territory. "Yeah, it happened, then it blew over," Bender says. Van Sant, however, cut Bender's cameo out of the film. And according to the stars, they see Bender's top billing as the only blemish on what was otherwise a dream come true. "The first thing onscreen is a Lawrence Bender production," says one. "It makes me want to puke."

No one recognizes Damon or Affleck as they cajole a janitor into unlocking the doors to their high school theater, and now they're back on the proscenium stage where Damon performed "Burning Down the House" in a school talent show. Casey and Ben are telling horror stories about Damon's slovenliness. The clincher for Affleck was when he showed up at the pad he shares with Damon in Manhattan's Chinatown and found his friend watching TV seated next to an old box of sushi being devoured by maggots. "I can forgive him," Affleck says, "because I know in my heart that he was using all his energy to figure out how he was going to play Will Hunting."

The two actors arbitrarily decided five years ago that Damon would play Will and Affleck would play Chuckie, a supporting role. Damon, as a consequence, gets the girl and a chance to shine with Robin Williams. As solace, Affleck penned himself a pivotal scene, in which Chuckie grants Will permission to turn his back on his friends and rise above his working-class roots. "Every day, I come by to pick you up," Chuckie says, "and we go out and we have a few laughs. But you know what the best part of my day is? The ten seconds before I knock on the door, 'cause I let myself think, I might get there, and you'd be gone. I'd knock on the door . . . and you wouldn't be there. You just left." It's an understated moment of male intimacy, one that almost overshadows the emotional pyrotechnics between Damon and Williams.

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Casey Affleck, 48, is an Oscar-winning actor best known for his roles in “Manchester by the Sea,” “Gone Baby Gone” and “Oppenheimer.” He co-wrote and co-stars in the heist film “The Instigators,” which will stream on Apple TV+ starting Aug. 9. He spoke with Marc Myers.

Early home life was a wild and unmonitored experience. I grew up in the late ’70s and ’80s on a slightly rundown street in a sweet neighborhood in Cambridge, Mass. Our area off Central Square was ethnically diverse and blue collar.

My father was many wonderful things, but his alcoholism took him from us for many years. As a result, my mother was a single mom for much of my childhood.

Affleck with his mother, Chris, in Westwood, Calif., in 2000. Photo: Ron Galella Collection/Getty Images

My family lived in a two-story clapboard house. My mother rented out the space above us. Many houses had three generations living at home, and families survived from paycheck to paycheck. Everyone was in the same situation.

My mom was an elementary school teacher. She worked long hours, so my older brother, Ben, and I saw her mostly before and after dinner, when she’d grade papers and we’d do homework. My dad was a janitor, a mechanic and a bartender. Before I was born, he was a stage manager at the Theater Company of Boston. 

In my early years, I attended AA meetings for kids who had a parent who was an addict. The goal was to help me understand what was happening and to cope. We’d re-enact at-home scenarios—behaving like your addicted parent to better grasp the problem and express your feelings. This role-playing was my first unintended exposure to acting.

Eventually, my dad’s drinking and erratic behavior led to my parents’ divorce when I was 9. Mom, Ben and I remained in our house while my dad moved to various places.

My mother placed an emphasis on education, so Ben and I had to maintain some level of academic standards. As a kid, I was a class-clown extrovert and got into lots of trouble because of it. 

When I was 10, my mom was a tutor for child actors on PBS educational programs. We went to Mexico for nearly a year and traveled throughout the country and the Yucatán Peninsula with a PBS TV series. My horizons broadened.

After we returned to Cambridge, my mom’s best friend, Patty Collinge, took an interest in me. She was a casting director with two daughters my age who became two of my best friends. Patty would take us to film sets to be extras so she could keep an eye on us. 

Affleck, left, at age 11, and at age 4. Casey Affleck (Family Photo)

I never had plans to become an actor, but in high school, I had a great drama teacher, Gerry Speca. He gave me most of the tools I use now.

He’d arrive at 7:30 a.m. and stayed most nights until 8 or 9. He was brilliant, selfless and could be hard on us. I think he initially saw me as a mediocre performer who was a bit of a wiseass. I didn’t get good parts until I was a senior. 

Gerry also encouraged us to write our own plays. We did months of skits and improv scenes. Then he put all that stuff together, and we competed in the New England Drama Festival. Everything I’ve been able to do I can attribute to the process that Gerry taught me.

Acting just happened. As soon as I graduated from high school, my best friend and I drove to California and saw everything in between. In L.A., we lived with a bunch of people from Cambridge, including Ben and Matt Damon, but I still felt like an outsider.

From left, Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and Casey Affleck at Damon’s birthday party in the late 1980s. Photo: Casey Affleck (Family Photo)

I spent 1994 in L.A. auditioning for roles that I didn’t get and working as a busboy in a brewery. I decided to go to college. I did two years, total, at Columbia University. I also auditioned for acting jobs to earn enough to pay the next semester’s tuition. But as acting work picked up, I faded on college. Now I wish I hadn’t. 

The turning point in my acting career was the 2007 film “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,” in which I played Ford. I began that role by trying to understand the person who had killed James. To do so, I had to understand the darkness in myself.

Clockwise from top left: Casey Affleck in ‘The Assassination of Jesse James’ (2007); in ‘Gone Baby Gone’ (2007); in ‘The Instigators’ (2024), right, with Matt Damon; and in his Oscar-winning role in ‘Manchester by the Sea’ (2016), leaning on Kyle Chandler’s shoulder. Everett Collection (3); Apple

Today, I live in the same four-bedroom French Norman house in East L.A. that I bought in 2005.

My dad eventually went into rehab and became sober. Over the years I’ve come to appreciate and love him more and more. He is incredibly strong, of great character, extremely funny and very smart. I owe him and my mom a lot.

Their chief concern is whether I’m happy. On the acting side, the answer is never easy for me. As for my family, I love being a parent more than anything. 

Casey’s Hot Tub

“The Instigators”? I play Cobby, who, with a group of Boston thieves, attempts to pull off an election-night heist as a therapist tags along.

Downtime? I love being on my two kids’ schedules when they stay over.

Meaning? I make them lunch, take them to school, pick them up, do stuff after school, make dinner and hear about their day.

Pastime? I play on a baseball team and write a lot.  

Splurge? I bought a hot tub from a “Price Is Right” contestant who didn’t want it. It’s big and ugly, but I am kind of star struck by it. I even added a cold plunge.