How he's mending his broken heart



Cosmo, June 1999, By Jancee Dunn

Ben Affleck just became America's most eligible bachelor, but he admits he still loves Gwyneth. Here, in an exclusive interview with Cosmo, he talks about fame - and the truth behind the break-up.

     Despite Ben Affleck's sexy photo spreads and the bags of tear-stained fan mail he receives, he'll be the first to tell you he hasn't always been an, um..., box-office winner with girls. "As a kid, I was the guy who got dumped a lot," he says, blithely eating salad with his fingers at a New York restaurant. "I'd be talking on the phone for a week to a girl and I'd be like, 'I love you. Let's go out!' "He shakes his head. "I became too needy."
     Worse, Ben was a gangly teen, and while sometimes a good old-fashioned growth spurt can turn a dag into a babe overnight, that wasn't the case with Ben. "I don't think the girls were saying, 'I'm looking for somebody awkward and beanpole like, who doesn't have control over his own limbs,'" he says. "My head was misshapen and lumpy, and I was way too sensitive."
     But now, at 26 (with his lumpy head a distant memory), Ben has achieved the kind of success that makes people jealous: an Oscar, shared with his best friend Matt Damon for writing Good Will Hunting, and a boatload of new movies. Plus he now dates girls like Gwyneth Paltrow. Well, he did. (We'll get to that.)

Becoming headline news
     Refreshingly, you won't hear Ben whinge the way other newly megafamous stars often do: the paparazzi, the zealous fans, lack of privacy, etc. Ben's whole attitude seems to be, "Isn't this fun?" He likes to talk and jumps from subject to subject with dizzying speed, even spilling the beans about his recent split with Gwyneth. "I'm definitely amused at seeing my love life on the evening news," he says about their January break-up. "But I just can't believe how much I've read that's invented. I've seen so many scurrilous - and what I consider libellous - things written about her. And it's always attributed to 'a source,' which is most likely some guy looking for a $20 bag of crack."
     So what is the truth? Ben says, "It's much more pedestrian than people make it out to be. There is no truth whatsoever to the gossip that anything is her fault," he says, addressing the rumour that Gwyneth cheated on him. "The simplest, most mundane answer - that two people came to a mature and amicable decision - isn't good for the tabloids, is it? I have enormous fondness, respect and love for Gwyneth."
     And it's obvious, in the roundabout way that Gwyneth's name sneaks into the conversation, that they had a good time while it lasted. "A few months ago, I moved into this apartment in New York," he says. "Nice loft, great big windows-just what living in New York should be. Anyway, my girlfriend [aka Gwyneth] was 'out about town and ran into Patrick Stewart - you know, Jean-Luc Picard on Star Trek? So they start chatting and hesays, 'Do you stay at...' and he gives my address. And she said, 'Uhh ... yeah.' And he gave her this look and said, 'Well, you should really get some blinds.'"
     Ben cringes visibly. "I know he was talking about me because I do some embarrassing things at home by myself. Like, when you contort your body to see how hideously monstrous you can make it look naked? Not the kind of thing I really wanted Patrick Stewart to see."

The naked guy in the shower
     Ben Affleck graced the screen at the tender age of seven, when he acted in an indie movie (directed by a family friend) called The Dark End of the Street. Encouraged by his mum, a teacher, and his father, a bartender who now works as a counsellor at a rehab facility, Ben then began to turn up in a slew of commercials and made-for-TV movies.
     Young Ben worked hard, mostly in order to feed a habit that had spun dangerously out of control. "I collected comic books, which more or less was my whole universe," he recalls. "Doing after-school specials was just a means to an end of being able to buy more comic books."
     He was also a Prince fan, so when he was 10, he papered his bedroom wall with the poster from Prince's Controversy. "It was Prince in bikini underwear in the shower. I remember my mother seeing it and the faintly disapproving look on her face that a 10-year-old boy had a picture of a naked man in the shower on his wall. And it was when Prince was in his double-entendre raunch phase. There was a song called Jack U Off. I remember my mum asking, 'Do you know what that means?' I thought I did, but l really didn't." He grins, "I certainly didn't think that it meant to manually masturbate another person."
     Ben met Matt Damon in Little League baseball and the two soon became fast friends. High school, he says, was "predominantly African-American, and the music to listen to was rap. I thought I had discovered this really neat band that no one else listened to, called the Grateful Dead. I was like, 'Man, these guys are really cool!' My senior yearbook quote was, 'What a long, strange trip it's been.' I thought I had dug that up! I didn't know that it was the most ubiquitous yearbook quote in the United States."
     After graduating from high school and a short, non-graduating stint at uni, Ben lived with Matt in LA, where they supported themselves with a steady, if a tad unsatisfying, stream of acting roles. In 1993, they started to write Good Will Hunting, a process that took about three years. While it was being shopped around for producers for development (these things take time in Hollywood), Ben played the lead in Kevin Smith's 1997 film Chasing Amy, after meeting Kevin at a party. This is the first role that got Ben noticed.
     Then last year ... well, you know the rest. But for all the attention lavished on Good Will Hunting, Ben and Matt weren't paid much for their efforts. "We got what seemed like an enormous amount for the screenplay," Ben says, oblivious to the couple at the table next to him who are shamelessly listening in. "Which was basically [US]600,000 bucks that Matt and I split. After the government and everyone else takes a piece, it turns into $110,000 (each]."
     Ben ran out and promptly blew $40,000 of it on a black Jeep Cherokee. "Growing up, the one thing that I always wanted was a nice new car. My first car was a $400 Toyota Corolla station wagon that was always leaking. So for me to get the Jeep, that was the epitome of success, wealth and opulence."
     Nine months later, however, Ben was "flat broke." Then came the Oscar and Armageddon, and now it's safe to say Ben will never go hungry again.

Pet names and pet projects
     Oh, my. The chef in the kitchen has arrived to pay Ben Affleck a visit, and he is ... well, it's safe to say that he's pretty much bowing and scraping.
     Eventually, the smiling man leaves. Ben exhales. "Just another semi-awkward social interaction," he says. "I just feel self-conscious and half the time I'm thinking, 'Does he think I'm someone else?'"
     Please. His many writing commitments aside, Ben is involved in a ton of projects. He has a part in Dogma (to be released in the States in October), brought to you by Chasing Amy's Kevin Smith. It's a religious comedy that already has some people riled up. (For starters, God is played by Alanis Morissette.)
     Ben's most-anticipated role is in his new film Forces of Nature, a comedy about a man trying to get home to his fiancee. Along the way, he meets freewheelin' chick Sandra Bullock, whom, by the way, Ben calls Sandy. "I once met a guy who had a small part in Speed, who said, 'The thing about Sandy is, Sandy's wonderful.' For years, that guy was my example of an asshole. Sandythis, Sandythat. But then, you find yourself saying little nicknames like that once you get to know famous people on a first-name basis. It's equally valid to do it - and to hate the person that does it."
     He wouldn't, he says, rule out more action movies like last year's blockbuster Armageddon, which earned him the scorn of some critics. "You're talking to someone who, if I had a top 10 list of movies, would include the first Lethal Weapon, 48 HRS, Trading Places and Slap Shot," he enthuses, as the couple at the nearby table nod in agreement. "That kind of encompasses my range of tastes."
     It's very easy to picture Ben hanging out with his mates, heatedly compiling this list and trading Axel Foley-isms. Grounded, isn't he? But perhaps the best way to sum up his down-to-earth attitude is to share Ben Affleck's Three Rules of Living.
     "Don't ever take yourself too seriously," he begins. "Take what you do seriously, and find the humour in as much of life as you possibly can. Those are my only three rules." He grins, then starts to laugh. "Three nuggets, Confucius-style. Just put me under a tree and I'll fire out little bits of wisdom."