Ben Affleck
Ben Affleck
Benjamin Geza Affleck-Boldt, better known as Ben Affleck, is an American actor and filmmaker. He began his career as a child actor, starring in the PBS educational series The Voyage of the Mimi. He later appeared in the coming-of-age comedy Dazed and Confusedand various Kevin Smith films including Chasing Amyand Dogma. Affleck gained fame when he and childhood friend Matt Damon won the Golden Globe and Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Good Will Hunting. He then starred in...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth15 August 1972
CityBerkeley, CA
CountryUnited States of America
The trap for an actor is that you become too successful at what you're trying to do, and you can find yourself stuck there.
(I) try new things and give myself permission to fail and experiment because only that way can you get really successful.
I've got to work really hard and I know exactly what I've achieved because I know how hard I've worked, and I make sure to work as hard as I absolutely possibly can, because I know that's the only shot I have at being successful.
But on balance, a performer wants to feel that there's something there which stands out because you put a lot of effort into it, a lot of energy and a lot of yourself into something. I feel pretty successful about some movies I've been in that have not been greeted with a lot of enthusiasm and I do trust my own criteria.
He used to be, actually a very successful actor. ... One of the things that's encouraging about that is it represents citizen politicians, people that aren't career politicians.
In keeping with Miramax tradition, I was instructed to find the 'hottest young stars around' to cast in the movie. I got a list of two names: Michelle Monaghan and Casey Affleck. I was lucky enough to get them both.
I kinda see my current position like this: 'Here's your five minutes in the toy store, so you gotta do all the good movies you can before Chuck Woolery rings the bell.'
You can just start to feel really pregnant. Like you are the hugest person on the face of the planet,
On contract clauses: 'There's all this language where you can't jump out of a plane or ride motorcycles. You have to go home and just sit there.
The thing that kept bringing us back to Pete's movie is that it was a story about real people. It (also) had a very specific locale; Chicago is to this movie what Boston was to 'Good Will Hunting,' ... It was enormously heartfelt and, ultimately, nobody could deny being moved by his story.
Sometimes it's Britney Spears and sometimes it's Carrie Fisher. I can't tell if I've got a Lolita complex or an Oedipus complex.
One of the ways that I could contribute was to shill some memorabilia, and the other was to talk to you and try to get people to pay attention to this auction.
I am a first-time director given an opportunity to pursue an artistic ambition I would not likely have the chance to elsewhere. The budget is excruciatingly tight, I am regularly abused and I expect to be fired sometime before we shoot. It's nice to see that, at Miramax, continuity has been maintained.
I think we all like to see ourselves as good dads, but there's also that fear, 'Oh, I don't want to be like my father,' or, 'I hope my kid doesn't turn out like me.' You know, I have those feelings too. So the key is optimism.