Ben Affleck Hollywoodland Interview

Actor Ben Affleck knows a thing or two about the downside of fame. After all the man formerly known as Bennifer knew his career was in trouble when his personal life made headlines rather than his professional achievements. So when the opportunity came along to play George Reeves he jumped at the chance. Reeves was one of the first actors to play Superman on TV in the late 1950’s and became so identified with the man of steel, that he was unable to get an acting job without the cape. Television was a new medium at the time and Reeves became one of its first celebrities. He also became one of its first casualties when his affair with a married woman became public knowledge. Much like today, the tabloids only wanted personal dirt on him and he became an industry joke. When he was found dead at 45, many thought it was suicide until investigators discovered two additional bullet holes. Gaynor Flynn caught up with Ben Affleck at the Venice International Film Festival where he chatted about the cult of celebrity, surviving Bennifer, directing his first film and having a baby.

Gaynor Flynn: How did you get involved in the project?

Ben Affleck: I read the script, it had been out there for a long time. There were various people attached to it. Then I heard it was finally getting made and I leapt at the chance.


Gaynor Flynn: Could you relate to George Reeves, after all you did do Daredevil?

Ben Affleck: Yeah, I definitely had a lot to draw from - in the sense that I knew how ridiculous you feel in a red suit (laughs). You feel - even if these movies work - very, very silly. It’s hard to ground what you’re doing in any sense of reality. You can’t sit there and say "Oh, I know how that feels", when you are preparing for a scene in which you do something supernatural, wearing a rubber suit. When you are breaking tables, they are crappy fake tables - so the whole thing feels pathetic.


Gaynor Flynn: Do you think George Reeves was a good actor who never got a chance to realize his potential?

Ben Affleck: When you watch him in From Here to Eternity, I think he is as good as the other actors in it. He had this Montgomery Cliff naturalistic acting style that started to evolve during that time. I think he would have done better. The mistake he made - and which this movie is about - is that his ambition made him impatient. He would have gotten other roles, because he was a good enough actor. But he wanted to live and look like a movie star. His ego demanded more. He worried too much about the money and didn’t wait long enough.


Gaynor Flynn: Like Reeves you’ve also experienced the downside of fame, which is when your private life becomes more important than your work.

Ben Affleck: Yeah that’s kind of the modern form of typecasting, you don’t get typecast as a certain character you get typecast as yourself and with George they couldn’t see past the Superman character. Nowadays the danger is that people don’t see past what they read in the tabloids and that can be as damaging if not more so than the other type of typecasting. I certainly can tell you from experience its bad. It’s bad psychologically, bad for your career.


Gaynor Flynn: How did you cope with that?

Ben Affleck: I just wanted to take a break, go away for a while and try to figure out what I wanted to do and try to make things calm down because I felt so suffocated and miserable and gross being in the middle of that kind of tabloid media. The tabloid media has gotten so intense in the last five years so this movie is part of an effort I’m making to try to like get the kind of control over my life and make it a little smaller and reign it in and contain it and do things I actually feel good about.


Gaynor Flynn: What did you do specifically?

Ben Affleck: I directed a movie for one thing which was really nice and I got married and had a kid those are the things that really solidified my life but you know creatively I just took some time. I didn’t want to do any interviews and I didn’t want to have my photograph taken and just get out of the celebrity hamster cage so that I could withdraw a little bit. And directing a movie was really wonderful it was an intense amount of work but I could do it privately and that was really nice.


Gaynor Flynn: Which element of George Reeves touched you most?

Ben Affleck: There was a lot but one of the things that I found heartbreaking was how much people liked him. He went out of his way to make people comfortable, he was really generous he was gregarious and sweet at a time when sweetness wasn’t necessarily the model of masculinity and he was gentle and kind and sincere but he was miserable, and broken hearted and terribly unhappy and to me there is something really sad about that. He spent his life putting on a face and making everybody else happy until he just couldn’t anymore.


Gaynor Flynn: I understand you did a lot of research for the role, including watching 24 episodes of Superman.

Ben Affleck: The thing is he was a real person and he was a guy I frankly identified with. I felt he was a guy who the media insisted on presenting as somebody else and he didn’t feel he was that person and I can understand that and he felt stymied in a lot of ways. He didn’t feel sorry for himself but he had a lot of pain in his life and I don’t think he ever got a fair shot and I wanted this movie to give him a fair shot and I wanted it to be respectful. I didn’t want it to gloss over anything but I wanted it to honest and I felt a personal connection to the guy although he’s been long dead 50 years.


Gaynor Flynn: You also put on quite a bit of weight for the role as well right? Was that difficult?

Ben Affleck: (laughs) Well putting it on is not that hard lets be honest. The best time I had was putting the weight on. Taking it off is really hard, harder than I thought.


Gaynor Flynn: Do you think there are certain types of characters or people who are just too sweet for Hollywood?

Ben Affleck: I like that idea with George he probably was too sweet in some ways. The movie is about in some ways ambition and he had an ambition that was thwarted and this is a town which is the capitol of ambition, but really what its about to me is the tendency that we have as people to be dissatisfied. I’ll be happy if I get this commercial. I’ll be happy if I have this relationship with this woman then that’ll make me happy, or if I was rich if I had a $1 million I’d be happy. I’d be happy if I was famous then I’d be happy. And of course none of its true but we perpetually tell ourselves it is. George is just a really good high profile example of that universal human tendency.


Gaynor Flynn: Sounds like you’ve changed your priorities?

Ben Affleck: Yeah I’ve definitely changed my priorities. Work has kind of taken a back seat to everything else. Ironically even though I feel like I’m more equipped to do my job better and I’m more interested in doing a better job its not as important to me, I mean its very important to me but its not the most important thing and that’s nice. It’s a cliché but having a family has made me reorganise my priorities rather thoroughly.


Gaynor Flynn: What does directing give to you that acting doesn’t?

Ben Affleck: Some people think its control but its not really control because you don’t control anything but it’s a more overall sense of authorship. In other words when you’re an actor you go well I can do this but in your mind your thinking well it would actually be better if this would happen or that would happen but you don’t get to do that you just get to do your one thing and as a director you get to author the entire movie.


Gaynor Flynn: Was it intimidating to work with Ed Harris?

Ben Affleck: (laughs) Yeah, I was intimidated. Ed Harris and Morgan Freeman are two guys I have kind of idolised my entire life so it was scary but ultimately I just had to rely on the fact that it was my movie and I understood the characters. Of course those guys are great because they’re so smart and they understand how a movie works most efficiently and effectively and they were spectacularly sweet to me and they’d just go okay great, what do you need and it was honour to have them.


Gaynor Flynn: How do you feel about the industry now that the craziness of the past is behind you?

Ben Affleck: I feel pretty good. I like this movie, I like where my life is heading. I like directing. You never know, there’s no guarantees I have my regrets but hopefully that’s in the past and I hope for the best.


Gaynor Flynn: Would you like to work with your wife Jennifer Garner?

Ben Affleck: (laughs) I believe the work we will do together will not be in movies.