Ben's back in business

Good will ran out for Ben Affleck after too long with J-Lo and too many turkeys. But with his new film Hollywoodland premiering at Venice, he's about to regain credibility THE thing about fame," says Ben Affleck, wistfully, "is that you can't undo it." It's a subject that's been on his mind for a while, and not just because it's the theme of his latest film, Hollywoodland, in which he plays a good- looking, promising young actor who ends up typecast and downtrodden by celebrity. In fact, the film is almost the story of Affleck's own life.

Ten years ago, with his childhood friend Matt Damon, the actor was the toast of Hollywood. The pair won the Best Screenplay Oscar for Good Will Hunting, the movie in which they both also starred. But while Damon kept his head down, his private life out of the news and built on that early promise with a run of challenging roles, Affleck embraced the moviestar life. He dated his leading ladies, took the lead in a succession of all-American action blockbusters, including Pearl Harbor and Armageddon, and was rarely out of the gossip columns.

"I started out wanting to be the great American actor," says the fit, chiselled star when I meet him in LA. "And writer and director and artist.

But I didn't really care about fame that much. I was a little suspicious of it. But I had a lot of fun when I first got famous. I loved it for a long time, until it turned on me."

And when it did, it savaged him. In 2002, after splitting from Gwyneth Paltrow, he started dating Jennifer Lopez; they met on the set of the devastatingly awful Gigli.

Such was the couple's determination to play out their relationship in the spotlight - lavish wedding plans, sickly love songs, co-starring film roles - that the world inevitably sickened of the duo, dubbing them Bennifer.

Affleck's magic at the box office turned to dust; bafflingly, he signed up for a succession of howlers, including Jersey Girl, again with J-Lo, and Paycheck, for which he won a Golden Raspberry for Worst Actor in 2004. No one had a good word to say about him.

"I just thought I should quit acting," he says now. "It was horrible to feel so suffocated. I thought, I'd rather do something else than do this." So he stopped working and took two years off to lick his wounds.

Hollywoodland, which premieres at the Venice Film Festival at the end of this month, marks his return to the big screen and his return to form.

Sitting before me, he seems perfectly at ease. With trim short hair, casual in jeans and shirt, he is bright and self-analytical and keen to share theories on the missteps in his career.

"I did a lot of great movies in succession," he says, "but, weirdly enough - and I think I was too sensitive - I felt nobody noticed. Other stuff got attention and I didn't get good reviews. I thought I would accomplish really good work and people would say it was really good work and I would feel validated, but that didn't happen."

Affleck was perhaps right to feel peeved.

People were quick to overlook his impressive character work in dark, quirky films such as the thriller Changing Lanes with Samuel Jackson in 2002, his convincing romantic turns in Bounce and Forces of Nature, and those tastily sardonic roles in Shakespeare in Love and Dogma.

"So I thought, y'know what? The only thing for me really to do is create a life and security for myself and put aside some money so I don't have to be out there selling used cars. There were films I'm glad I did and things I deeply, deeply regret."

But he also acknowledges that he made some fatal errors in the way he handled "the Jennifer Lopez thing". They got together when her pop career was at its peak and attention on them was relentless.

"I think I was unwilling to change my behaviour to accommodate that," he confesses. "My attitude was: 'I don't care what [the media] say, I'm going to be who I am anyway', when I should have just stayed in the house."

Taking mediocre roles for the money while suffering chronic media overexposure was "a combination which created something so ugly I decided not to do stuff for a while. I thought if I stopped, the tension and vitriol or Schadenfreude or gossip, gossip, gossip, would have to slow down. And some of it did."

The lull, and financial security, allowed him to seek out more interesting, less lucrative acting choices, such as Hollywoodland. It's a noir thriller set in the Fifties, directed by Allen Coulter, which explores the death of the real-life actor George Reeves. Best known as TV's Superman, and unable to escape the role, he died in suspicious circumstances. Did he kill himself, or was he murdered by one of the ruthless Hollywood types around him?

Diane Lane plays Reeves's married lover and Adrien Brody the private detective investigating the case.

Affleck piled on 28 pounds to play the downtrodden actor; at his lowest ebb, the ageing Reeves was taking part in wrestling matches wearing the Superman suit. Affleck manages to bring a vulnerability to the role of a beefcake hopelessly struggling for recognition. After all those depressingly cheesy lead roles of the past, he is refreshingly good.

"I decided I wanted to do things that are beautiful, things that I love. I wanted to try something that's good. They won't always work, but they're not for the money."

Affleck always harboured desires to be an actor. Born in 1972, in California, he was raised in Boston where, aged eight, he made lifelong friends with Matt Damon. They lived two blocks apart, went to the same school and, after a string of TV jobs, ended up acting together in School Ties, in 1992. They had to wait another five years for the spectacular visibility that Good Will Hunting would bring them in 1997, and the subsequent fallout.

"I can't go back to the days when nobody had any preconceptions about me," Affleck says. "For good or ill, you can't get rid of them." Despite this, he is doing the best he can to change those preconceptions. He got married, to another co-star, Jennifer Garner, with whom he worked on Daredevil in 2003.

The couple had a daughter, Violet, last December. Despite Garner's own celebrity, media interest has been less intense, probably because the couple have avoided the limelight.

AFFLECK'S involvement in some forthcoming cool, edgy films is also helping to rebuild his credibility. One is Smokin' Aces, in which Affleck has a small role and made "like, 8,000 bucks". Featuring an eclectic ensemble cast, including Andy Garcia and Alicia Keys, it's about the disappearance of a Las Vegas magician, and looks promising.

He is also exploring other avenues with his directorial debut, Gone, Baby, Gone, a crime thriller based on the novel by Dennis Lehane (Mystic River), which he also co-wrote. There's no part for Affleck, but his brother Casey takes the lead, alongside Morgan Freeman and Ed Harris.

"Being a director is a more realistic way of expressing yourself artistically," he says. "If Gone, Baby, Gone works or doesn't work, I'm the guy to see. And it's also a way of getting to do this without flogging the mule of my own face in magazines and on television, which started to feel really ugly to me after a while."

It's a brave man who can speak so critically of his own past behaviour and mistakes, but Affleck is smart enough to own up to his failures. "The criteria I try to live to is family first, and second is the kind of work I do. If you're looking for answers about fame and fortune, you'll have to seek wiser counsel."

(c)2006. Associated Newspapers Ltd.