Paltrow, who called Affleck “the most intelligent man I’ve met under 45,” agreed.
“He’s a brilliant actor,” said the Oscar-nominated actress, who — like Affleck — declined to discuss the reasons they ended their yearlong romance. “He has a huge range and impeccable timing and real depth. I think it’s great that it’s coming out slowly, bit by bit.”
Damon may have had the lead in “Good Will Hunting,” but it was Affleck who carried what Van Sant calls the movie’s “big moment” — near the end, when Chuckie (Affleck) knocks on an apartment door and discovers that his best friend (Damon) has finally taken his advice and left town.
“He finds his friend is gone, he just sort of looks at the door. And you can read the whole movie on his face,” said Van Sant. “I remember in our original cut he looked at the door, back at his car, back at the door and he leaves. To my editor, economy was better. But I said, ‘We have to make the take as long as possible because he’s doing such a good job.’ This was the tear-jerking scene of the movie. The whole movie built up to it. And Affleck doesn’t make a mistake.”
There are other moments — his desperate declaration of love in “Chasing Amy,” for example, and even his brief, haughty performance in “Shakespeare in Love” — where Affleck shines as an actor. The question now is whether he can find parts that make the most of his regular-guy appeal.
In “Forces of Nature,” which opens March 19, Affleck says his role is more like the real him than any previous part: Ben Holmes, a loyal, monogamous groom-to-be whose attempts to get to his Georgia wedding are complicated by a free-spirited travel companion (Bullock) and a hurricane. He says he liked the unconventional script, which raises issues “close to my heart: questions of commitment and risk and certainty.” Plus, he said, he was eager to play someone who wasn’t cocky and full of himself.
“The guy is wimpy and goofy and scared and bedraggled and bewildered and overwhelmed and indecisive,” Affleck said, delivering this laundry list in a way that sounds improbably attractive. “It was an opportunity for an un-vain performance, a chance to lighten up.
But according to Bullock, even a lighter Affleck is intense.
“His mind works constantly,” she said, sounding a bit like a protective older sister. “He completely chews off every nail. He’s always going. He’ll extend himself to 50,000 different places really wanting to be there. . . . I hope he finds a place he can be quiet. I wish for him a place where he can say no.”
In fact, Affleck has begun turning down work. His mom recalls one “horrible” script she lobbied against in which “every time anybody opened a closet or a refrigerator, it was full of body parts.”
But being choosy doesn’t mean slacking off. Affleck is making a study of Hollywood, picking the brains of the smart and successful. While working with DreamWorks, he’s getting to know Steven Spielberg and he calls Miramax’s Harvey Weinstein a friend.
Affleck says he wants to direct his own movies and might someday even want to try his luck as a studio executive. And he and Damon are also doing some television, executive-producing a miniseries being developed at Fox — a dramatization of Howard Zinn’s nonfiction book “A People’s History of the United States,” which they made famous with a mention in the “Good Will Hunting” script.
“As long as I have the opportunity where I’m getting scripts I consider worthwhile, I’ll continue acting,” Affleck said one morning recently, sporting his usual take-nothing-for-granted manner. “I’ve made more money already than I ever thought. And I functioned happily with the bare minimum for a long time. I don’t need that much. The most important thing is to not have to do work you don’t want to do.”
Plunking down at a table at Hugo’s, a West Hollywood eatery, he ordered a light breakfast. Then he apologized for it–first, to the waitress for inconveniencing her with a special order (an omelet of six egg whites, one yolk), then, to a reporter for acting like “one of those actors who exists on parsley and wheatgrass.”
