Ben Affleck has been at the top of his game in recent years. He’s made the move from a successful Hollywood actor to director and with his latest feature, Argo, earning high praise it looks like Ben is on the fast track to a superstar revival. That revival hasn’t been without it’s missteps though.
Based on the events of the 1979 Iran hostage crisis, Agro is the latest in a string of hits for the actor turned director, but a few years ago we couldn’t say the same. The Sum of All Fears, Paycheck, Gigli, the proof was in the titles and Affleck was slipping. Still to this day fans curse Ben’s starring role in the 2003 car wreck, Daredevil.
Fans spit all over the Marvel flop, a film Affleck has since moved on from, but nine years later in an interview discussing Affleck’s transformation into a successful director he looks back on film and admist he didn’t like Daredevil, just like us!
I made a bunch of movies that didn’t work. I was ending up in the tabloids. I don’t know what the lesson is, except that you just have to find your compass. I liked Sum of All Fears. Daredevil I didn’t at all. Some movies should have worked and didn’t. At a certain point, it’s just up to the movie gods. Anyway, this image becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. And I just said, ‘I don’t want to do it anymore. This is horrible. I don’t want to be in this spotlight, this glare, in this way. It’s tawdry, it’s ugly, it’s oppressive, and it’s inane. So I’m going to try to get away.’
And most of the way I did that was by not acting. I said, ‘I’m going to steer myself toward directing. I’m going to do something that takes me toward a place where the work that I do is reflective of what I think is interesting dramatically.’
Oddly it was Affleck’s role as star of the original Superman TV series, George Reeves, in the ’50s drama Hollywoodland that spurned his switch to a more behind-the-scenes role. Much like Reeves, Affleck was on the path to becoming an actor frustrated with his life’s direction and his performance showed the world a much more mature Ben Affleck than we were used to. It, in a way, was Ben’s wake up call.
You know, putting on the uncomfortable, cheesy suit–I understood that. And I understood what it was like to feel limited by perceptions and having ambitions to do things that were more interesting. And also, I got married, and I got older. And had kids. You know, the current of the river of life moves you downstream anyway. But I definitely reject the narrative that says, you know, Bad Guy Turned It Around. My life isn’t Behind the Music. I wasn’t a criminal!
Pretty sage advice for a guy who at one point could do know wrong, but has since shown even Hollywood elite have moments of weakness. If your still hating on Daredevil after all these years it might be time to move on, even Ben’s moved past the events of that year. At least we can all agree he was the bomb in Phantoms.
Thanks to Blastr for letting us know Ben’s true feelings.
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