Listening to Matt Damon discuss his friendship with Ben Affleck will never get old.
“We really were bizarre kids who were serious about acting, and we were in the union,” Damon, 55, recalled during the Tuesday, July 7, episode of Amy Poehler’s “Good Hang” podcast. “At 16 and 14 years old, we were going to New York together to audition for stuff. Our friendship was founded on quite a bit of common experience, but that was central to it and very unique to the two of us.”
He continued, “Here we are, 40 years later, and it’s like, we should make every single movie we can together.”
Damon explained that he and Affleck, 53, started their Artists Equity production company in 2022 “partly” because they were living out their childhood dream.
Poehler, 54, noted that it’s “unusual” for two people to love working together as much as Damon and Affleck do.
“We’ve experienced so much of life together. It’s not a friendship that could ever be replicated, just because we grew up together,” Damon explained. “We were together all the time writing a screenplay together.”
Damon credited Affleck for having “a deep and abiding love and respect” for everything they were doing. He also made it clear that there’s not an “older brother, younger brother dynamic” between them.
“It’s very helpful when you’re working creatively with someone, because you’re not worried about their feelings,” Damon shared. “It’s just the allegiance is to the thing that we’re making, and we’re trying to get there as quickly as we can and as efficiently as we can. There’s a deep trust.”
Working with Affleck is “a very easy experience for Damon” because of the way they work together.
“It also ends up being just really fun, because you’re doing it with, for me, it’s my closest friend for 40 years, 45 years,” he continued. “Who else would I want to hang out with and do stuff with?”
According to Damon, their constant collaboration works because both he and Affleck are in “this new phase of life” together.
“It’s about, really, the pursuit of joy in our lives and in our work,” Damon said.
Damon and Affleck’s most recent project, The Rip, was released earlier this year. Affleck told Us Weekly exclusively in January that he was “lucky” to be able to continue to work with his close friend.
“I keep relearning things about Matt that I already knew and I forget them,” Affleck told Us. “Honestly, I am continually reminded of what a good father he is and what a fabulous actor he is.”
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