Ben Affleck

In the comedy written and directed by Richard Linklater, Affleck plays high school senior Fred O’Bannion, who is repeating a year after failing to graduate. After hazing freshmen, O’Bannion is humiliated in front of the rest of the school. Co-starring Matthew McConaughey, Milla Jovovich, Jason London, and Cole Hauser.

That’s where I learned that an actor could contribute to a movie beyond reading lines. Richard Linklater sent a note to all the actors that said, “If this movie is produced as written, it’ll be a massive underachievement.” We were all 19 and 20 and down in Austin, and all the actors started to write their own ideas and their own little scenes. It demystified the process for me in an important way. And I was in Austin with all those young people that summer, and I was the only person who didn’t have sex.

Affleck stars as comic book artist Holden McNeil in the romantic comedy directed by Kevin Smith. Holden begins a relationship with a gay girl, but his feelings for her place his love life, friendship and comic books career at risk. Co-starring Jason Lee, Joey Lauren Adams, Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith.

One of the best experiences I’ve had. We all lived in Kevin Smith’s house. We rehearsed it like a play. We shot on 16 millimeter. I got the chance to do the kind of acting I had never done before. Not knowing if anyone would ever see this cheap movie was freeing. It didn’t seem like a movie, more like people running around with a video camera.

Affleck plays Ned Alleyn in the John Madden romantic comedy, accepting the role of Mercutio in a Shakespeare play, only to find that the character dies. Co-starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Joseph Fiennes, Geoffrey Rush, Colin Firth, and Judi Dench.

[Alleyn] is sort of the Tom Cruise of his day. In terms of Shakespeare’s theater, you have to have Ned in your play.

Affleck plays Jim Young in the Ben Younger-directed crime drama. A senior broker at the firm J. T. Marlin, Young coaches new recruits to make millions in a cold-calling scheme that sells pump-and-dump stocks to investors. Comparing the film with Glengarry Glenn Ross:

Glengarry is the all-time epic greatest. But that was fun. Yeah, Ben Younger directed it. I had a really great time. I work now with Jennifer Todd, who was a producer on that movie … And you know, it was just, like really fun.

Affleck stars as Rafe McCawley in the Michael Bay-directed war epic. As World War II breaks out, Rafe and his childhood friend Danny Walker (Josh Hartnett) enlist in the U.S. Army Air Corps, and Rafe volunteers to fight with the Royal Air Force. Rafe promises his lover, nurse Evelyn Johnson (Kate Beckinsale), that he will return, but is shot down over the English Channel. In Pearl Harbor, Evelyn and Danny comfort each other when Rafe is reported killed in action, and begin a relationship. Rafe returns on the night of Dec. 6, 1941, having survived the crash, and confronts Danny. The next morning, they are forced to reconcile as they defend against the attack on Pearl Harbor.  Co-starring Cuba Gooding Jr., Alec Baldwin, William C. Scott, Jennifer Garner, and Jon Voight.

It’s about what a terrible cost it is for people to have to go to war and what a terrible thing it is.

Affleck plays CIA agent Jack Ryan in director Phil Alden Robinson’s adaptation of the Tom Clancy thriller. Ryan is called in to investigate the death of the Russian president and uncovers a plan by a white supremacist group to start a nuclear war with a stolen Israeli atomic bomb. Co-starring Morgan Freeman, James Cromwell, Liev Schreiber, and Alan Bates.

We shot The Sum of All Fears in Montreal, and it almost killed me. That town never closes. The food is amazing, the drink is amazing, the girls are gorgeous. It’s not a place to focus on your work.

Affleck plays lawyer Matt Murdock and his superhero secret identity Daredevil in Mark Steven Johnson’s adaptation of the Stan Lee Marvel comics. Blinded by toxic waste when he was a child, Murdock runs a Hell Kitchen law firm for the poor by day and fights crime as Daredevil by night. Jennifer Garner, Jon Favreau, Michael Clarke Duncan, and Colin Farrell co-star. His relationship with Garner develops on set:

[…] she won most of the fights in the movie, which was a pretty good predictor of what would happen down the road—my wife, holding swords and beating the living shit out of me.

Affleck stars as reverse engineer Michael Jennings in the John Woo adaptation of the Philip K. Dick short story. Jennings takes a high-paying job engineering a secret machine and, after his memory is wiped, discovers that he has given himself the ability to control future events. Co-starring Ben Affleck, Uma Thurman and Aaron Eckhart.

[Paycheck] asks thought-provoking questions like ‘What is the nature of existence?’, ‘Are we just a sum of a collection of memories, or is the whole greater than the sum of the parts, in the sense that we have a soul?’, ‘Why do we want to know the future so badly?…Does it mean that we’re just trying to calm our own fears, and does it mean that we’re not enjoying our lives as they happen?’ [These are] the kind of questions that don’t get asked in your typical Hollywood thriller blockbuster movie.