Ben Affleck is addressing the “massive embarrassment” he experienced after the Oscars snubbed him in the Best Director category.
Affleck, 53, appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Monday, January 5, and recalled his reaction to learning in 2013 that he was not nominated for directing the thriller Argo, which eventually won the Academy Award for Best Picture that year.
“It was the year, the horrible thing of everyone telling you, ‘You’re gonna get nominated, you’re gonna get nominated for director,’” Affleck told host Jimmy Kimmel, 58, adding, “And so, of course, I wake up that morning, and sure enough — and, by the way, it’s not [unlike] any other morning that I had not been nominated for Best Director. But all of a sudden, it’s a massive embarrassment. I woke up and people [said], ‘You didn’t get nominated.’”
Kimmel confessed that he’d thought of Affleck while watching Leonardo DiCaprio lose the Best Actor prize to Timothée Chalamet at the Critics’ Choice Awards the previous night. Meanwhile, One Battle After Another — the film starring DiCaprio, 51 — picked up awards for Best Picture and Best Director at the ceremony.
“I was thinking, boy, he’s got so many better places to be,” Kimmel joked of DiCaprio. “And the movie wins Best Picture. The director Paul Thomas Anderson wins Best Director, and then he doesn’t win. And I’m thinking he must be so pissed that [he had to leave] whatever he got airlifted from — a yacht somewhere — and couldn’t be there anymore. He came to lose.”
Kimmel’s sympathy for DiCaprio conjured Affleck’s Argo snub, “because this is maybe the worst award-show situation ever,” he mused. “I think you’re underselling this. Because Argo, not only was it nominated for the Oscar for Best Picture, you won Best Picture. You starred in it and directed it, and you were not nominated in either category … it’s as if the movie directed itself.”
Affleck admitted that he “felt” the same way at the time. The day the Oscar nominations were announced, he attended the 18th Critics’ Choice Awards in January 2013 and faced a line of reporters on the red carpet.
“It seemed like there were 500 people dying to talk to me,” he recalled. “And every single one of them [said], ‘Hi. So, the snub.’ What do you say to that? ‘Ha, ha, ha, yeah. It’s a bummer.’”
However, on a brighter note, he ended up winning the Best Director award for Argo that evening, besting Steven Spielberg for Lincoln and Kathryn Bigelow for Zero Dark Thirty.
“This negative event turns into a positive,” said Affleck, who congratulated Kimmel on winning the 2026 Critics’ Choice Award for Best Talk Show.
The actor, there to promote The Rip, his upcoming film with Matt Damon, read Kimmel a sarcastic note from Damon, 55, whom he quoted as writing, “You should have gotten canceled a long time ago. Maybe you would have gotten sympathy then so you could have won more than one minor movie award.”
Kimmel’s namesake talk show was briefly pulled off the air in September 2025 amid backlash from his commentary on the murder of right-wing political activist Charlie Kirk, who was shot to death that same month while speaking at Utah Valley University.
While accepting the trophy at Sunday’s event in Santa Monica, California, Kimmel thanked “all the writers and actors and producers and union members, many of you who are in this room who supported us, who really stepped forward with us and reminded us that we do not take free speech for granted in this city or in this country. Your actions were important and we appreciate them.”
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