Matt Damon and Ben Affleck have made three movies together in four years: “The Last Duel,” “Air” and “The Rip.” In a new interview with GQ magazine, the longtime friends and “Good Will Hunting” Oscar winners said they don’t have any plans to stop working together. Damon said it dawned on him that he needed to keep making films with Affleck after he watched Peter Jackson’s 2021 Beatles documentary “Get Back,” which ends on a final title card that says the band never worked together again. Damon had tears in his eyes and immediately thought about Affleck.
“Who cares if we oversaturate the marketplace with movies we’re both in?” Damon said. “We’re crazy if we don’t take advantage of the fact that we are both still here and able to do this.”
“Every time I act with Matt is a humbling experience because I learn to appreciate further just how good an actor he is,” Affleck added to GQ “He is so understated, so real and so honest — it’s the opposite of a ‘showy’ performance, and I think what he does is more difficult. When you know someone as long as I’ve known Matt, you develop a pretty good sense of what is real and what isn’t and it’s almost impossible to catch Matt acting. He is really a master of realism and it’s something I deeply admire about him. One of many things.”
Damon and Affleck’s careers have always been intertwined, from their early days acting together in Kevin Smith films like “Dogma” to their joint Oscar win for writing the screenplay for “Good Will Hunting.” But they’re collaborating these days like never before through their Artists Equity production banner. Their new project, the Joe Carnahan-directed crime thriller “The Rip,” streams exclusively on Netflix in 2026.
Affleck revealed to Entertainment Weekly a few years ago that it was Damon who helped get his career back on track after Affleck starred in “Justice League.” Damon was “a principal influence” on his friend’s decision to draw a line in the sand when it came to the kinds of parts he was going to tackle.
“I want to do the things that would bring me joy. Then we went and did ‘Last Duel’ and I had fun every day on this movie,” Affleck said at the time. “I wasn’t the star, I wasn’t likable. I was a villain. I wasn’t all the things I thought I was supposed to be when I started out and yet it was a wonderful experience. And it was all just stuff that came along that I wasn’t chasing.”
Head over to GQ magazine’s website to read Affleck and Damon’s latest interview in its entirety.
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