Lately, Affleck has been hard to miss. Here he is in the audience of “Saturday Night Live,” popping up to joke good-naturedly with the host, ex-girlfriend Gwyneth Paltrow, about their recent breakup. (“We just broke up a month ago,” he reminded her as part of the gag, which was scripted at the last minute when someone else backed out. “Didn’t you read about it? It was in all the papers.”)
Here Affleck is backstage at the Mike Tyson-Francois Botha fight in Las Vegas, prompting gossip by having a conversation with barely dressed bombshell actress Pamela Anderson. (He insists the meeting was no tryst: “It’s just not me — not that she presented the opportunity.”)
Here he is on TV’s “Politically Incorrect With Bill Maher,” arguing with Christian activists about the relevance of Clinton’s sex life. (“My contention,” he said mischievously, “is that having an affair makes you a better leader.”)
And hey, isn’t that him idling in traffic on San Vicente Boulevard, chatting with a couple of road repair workers who recognized the dude in the 1970 Chevy Malibu convertible as none other than A.J., the fresh-faced oil rigger in “Armageddon”?
“They wanted to know if I drive this all the time or if it’s for a movie,” Affleck said later of his huge blue boat of a car, one of his most prized possessions, which he keeps in Los Angeles. “They were nice guys.”
If the bicoastal Affleck, who has an apartment off Sunset Boulevard and a loft in Manhattan, already seems ubiquitous, however, true omnipresence is just around the corner. In addition to his roles in DreamWorks’ “Forces of Nature” and in Thornton and Frankenheimer’s two films for Miramax, he’s part of the huge ensemble cast of “200 Cigarettes,” Paramount Pictures’ New Year’s Eve-themed ’80s comedy that opened last month. Affleck also plays a renegade angel in Smith’s much-anticipated and controversial “Dogma,” due in theaters this fall (the actor’s seventh Miramax film in three years). He has a small role (three monologues) in first-time writer-director Ben Younger’s Wall Street drama “The Boiler Room” for New Line Cinema, and he has just announced plans to independently produce (with Damon) a $ 2-million comedy-romance called “The Third Wheel.” Oh, yeah: They’re both in it.
“We’re paying for it basically by me and Matt each taking a cameo, which means that a foreign sales company can justify giving us $ 2 million,” he said, leaning back in his chair with a Camel Light in one big hand, a diet Pepsi in the other.
Asked to describe the guiding principle behind his career, he demurred at first (“You get yourself all tied up trying to develop a Machiavellian overview. You’re fooling yourself if you think you can strategize in that way”). Then, out of his mouth came the Affleck motto: Make yourself happy.
“One of the things that Gwyneth taught me is to maintain a level of work where interesting people that you like want to work with you. And you do that by doing things you think are interesting, not by playing into some expectation,” he said, making one of several fond references to his former leading lady, whom he still describes as “dynamite.” “Rather than expect to do well by luck, to hope fortune smiles on me, my philosophy is you’ve got to satisfy yourself. . . . Maybe I have something to prove, but I want to keep surprising people. I like the fact that people say, ‘Look, even Ben Affleck was in “Shakespeare in Love.” And he wasn’t that bad!’
Affleck’s modesty appears startlingly genuine, much like the rest of him. Who can forget how effusive he and Damon were when they won their Oscars last year? (“There’s no way we’re going to do this in less than 20 seconds!” Affleck yelped during their acceptance speech.) Even more touching, remember who they took as their dates that night: their mothers.
“Ben has always had an incredible charisma. People are just getting introduced to it through film,” said Damon, Affleck’s best buddy for 18 years, from the San Antonio, Texas, set of “All the Pretty Horses,” Thornton’s adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel. “It’s hard to think of your best friend as a movie star, but the fact that he is stems from the extent to which parts of the real him come through. He is somebody that everybody wants to be around.”
