"Your Success Has Nothing To Do With The Failure Of Others"



Parade, Feb 6, 2000, BY GAIL BUCHALTER

At 27, Ben Affleck reflects on his early struggles in school, his feelings about his parents and being a child of divorce, girlfriends, marriage and competitiveness.

     MY PARENTS, especially my mother, didn't want me to be an actor," said Ben Affleck, 27. “As a kid, I was a natural mimic, bright-eyed, precocious and loudmouthed. But the qualities that go into making a child actor aren't necessarily the ones that make you a good person."

     Affleck became an actor anyway, making his name in Hollywood when he and pal Matt Damon shared the Oscar for best original screenplay for Good Will Hunting (1997). Since then, he has co-starred in Armageddon and Forces of Nature and taken smaller roles in Shakespeare in Love, 200 Cigarettes and Dogma.

     He stars again in Reindeer Games, directed by John Frankenheimer, to open later this month. He plays a car thief who, released from prison, falls into the arms of Charlize Theron and a sea of intrigue. "What thrilled me about Ben,” said Frankenheimer, "was that he is a genuinely nice person. Somehow he's able to remain unspoiled, when he's in a position to have anything he wants."

     Affleck and I met for lunch near his new home in the Hollywood Hills. He sported a goatee, and was smartly dressed in a black leather jacket, gray sweater and slacks. I was curious to learn how he silenced the loudmouthed kid and became the mature young man of Frankenheimer's description.

     His childhood home was a mix of social consciousness and turmoil. "My parents were beatniks before I was born," he said. "In the '60s, my father was stage manager for an experimental theater company. My mother graduated from Harvard."

     The two actually met in Berkeley, where Ben was born in 1972. His mother, Chris, became an elementary school teacher. His father, Timothy, who didn't go to college, wrote plays and short stories, though none were published. "He's a self-taught guy," Affleck said, "a voracious reader with an extraordinary sense of humor. I get all my wit from my dad."

     The family returned to the East Coast when Ben was 2. A year later, his brother, Casey, was born. They moved to Cambridge, Mass., where his father got work as an auto mechanic- the first of a series of jobs he would find unsatisfying. Over time, he turned more and more to alcohol.

     "My parents made a comfortable living;" Affleck said. "They also introduced me to issues of race, class, prejudice and oppression. I was raised knowing I wasn't the only person in the world and that my actions can even affect individuals I don't know. My mother gave me an enduring sense of respect for other people."

     By 9, however, Ben was learning a harsher lesson. "I remember my parents fighting," he said. “My father was an alcoholic. He left home when I was 11. You get scared-you realize things can fall apart. I wanted to hold everything together. I don't like conflict. I wanted things to be okay."

     "I had a lot of anger," he admitted. "Any child of divorce does. My father lived in the same city, but we didn't see him frequently." Affleck's father remained in Cambridge, working as a custodian at Harvard. "When he was around, he kind of forced me to talk about how I felt- after the divorce and as I got older. My mother raised Casey and me, clearly to the detriment of her own life. She could have had a lot more fun if she didn't have to come home to obnoxious, ungrateful teenagers. We gave her a hard time- until we got older and realized what she'd done for us."

     When Ben was 8, a friend of his mother's offered him a small part in an independent film. The boy was hooked: "I felt I had an aptitude for acting," he recalled. "My mom hoped it was a passing phase."

     It wasn't. Ben appeared in PBS's The Voyage of the Mimi at 12. As a teen, he grew more determined, partly because of his father's discontent. "I saw him doing drudgery," Affleck said. "He didn't want to be a custodian or a bartender or an auto mechanic. That's why he changed jobs so often- they never made him happy. But he felt he had to make money to support the family."

     "My mother wanted me to go to some Ivy League school and be a history professor," he said. "But it just wasn't me. I was more of an underachiever than a rebel. I'd do just enough, and that infuriated her. I put her through such hell. I was suspended for ditching school a bunch of times."

     At her wit's end, Ben's mother signed him up for an Outward Bound trip, a tough wilderness excursion designed to teach self-discipline and self-reliance. “I went on the Colorado River," he recalled. "Spent a few days living in the woods. But I wasn't old enough to do any introspective thinking. It wasn't like I cleaned up my act and became studious. I was more interested in having experiences and running around."

     In 1990, after high school, Affleck attended the University of Vermont- for two months. Then he bolted. He packed up his car, said goodbye to his moth and friends and drove to L.A. He was 18. "I wanted to succeed or fail on my own merits," Affleck said. "I even found something appealing in all that initial rejection. I was 6 feet 3, and people told me `You're too big to be a leading man.' But I felt very brave, insisting I had a right to be there and had something to offer.

     Matt Damon, Affleck's friend since childhood, also migrated to L.A., and eventually they rented a house together.

     Ben's father also came to California. "He stopped drinking in 1990," Affleck said. "He's been working as a counselor at a recovery home for alcoholics and drug addicts. He had an extremely difficult life, but he showed me how you can change yourself and your life just by making the choice to do that. I have a really satisfying relationship with him today."

     Was Affleck still angry? "Sure," he said, "but you acknowledge it and forgive it. Part of growing up is being able to move past the hurts, so you don't carry anger and grief with you all the time."

     Jealousy is another emotion Affleck tries to avoid. "My brother, Casey [also an actor], Matt and I used to audition for the same roles as kids," he said. "There was an understanding that hundreds of people were auditioning, so you never felt it was you against your friends. Some people believe there are only so many slots, so for you to get in, someone has to be knocked out. I believe your success has nothing to do with the failure of others."

     After a run of playing louts and bullies ("I was always the kid throwing somebody against the locker"), Affleck landed his first lead in Chasing Amy (1997). The film changed Hollywood's perception of him, but Good Will Hunting made him a star.

     "Matt and I weren't working," he said. "We realized that if you don't impose some structure and discipline on your life, you'll go crazy. So we decided to write a screenplay." Good Will Hunting, a coming -of-age tale, was culled from the lives of its writers. At 25, Affleck won his Oscar.

     Affleck's on-and-off relationship with his high-school girlfriend finally ended, and he dated Gwyneth Paltrow for most of 1998. I asked him why they broke up. "There are all kinds of factors at work," he said. "I guess mostly it was about timing."

     "It was important to me to maintain a friendship with Gwyneth," he added. "We have similar sensibilities. I used to believe no straight man could be friends with a straight woman. Now I'm meeting women who are interesting and smart, and I think, `I hope we can be friends.'

     "I've been exposed to an enormous amount of cynicism in Hollywood about marriage. It has made me be very careful, but I have great hope. I want to have eight kids. Women hear that, and they go, `Oh, really? Like, I've got nothing to do for the next 15 years besides nurse babies!' But I believe the main goal in life is to have a great family and a wonderful relationship that nourishes you."

     Does he feel he has matured enough to have this kind of nurturing home life? "With my work," said Affleck, "I feel I've demonstrated an ability at least to pull it off. Whereas, in my personal life, I wouldn't say I've achieved that much. I've learned to accept when things go wrong and to look at myself with more objectivity and really evaluate bad patterns. I feel as if I've finally matured a little."

     So, is his mother satisfied with him? "She certainly has accepted my decision to be an actor," Affleck said. He laughed. "But I'm sure she'd still ask a genie to turn me into a happily married history professor with three kids."