As the dust settles surrounding the end of his marriage to Jennifer Lopez, there is no doubt someone will be there to help Ben Affleck pick up the pieces.
While Affleck has been spending time with another former wife, Jennifer Garner, someone else who has been a constant in his life is Matt Damon.
The pair share a bond that dates back well before they became two of Hollywood’s biggest stars. Let’s take a look at their relationship.
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A childhood bond
Affleck and Damon met as children while growing up in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Despite Damon being two years older, the two bonded over their difficult childhoods and shared interest in acting.
Damon’s parents divorced when he was two and his mother took him and his older brother to live in a share house. Meanwhile Affleck, whose father was an alcoholic, began acting professionally at seven.
Affleck told Parade that after changing schools at eight he found himself with no friends, so started hanging out with Damon, who lived two blocks away.
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“Matt gave acting a framework, an integration into the social hierarchy at school,” he said.
“Before Matt, I was by myself. Acting was a solo activity where I’d just go off and do something, act in a little TV show or something, and no one understood it.
“None of the other kids knew what it was I did, how it worked, or anything. All of a sudden I had this friend, Matt, and he gets it and wants to do it and thinks it’s interesting and wants to talk about it.”
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While students at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, they appeared in high school plays, although Damon has often said the best parts went to Affleck.
By the time Affleck was 14 and Damon was 16, the two would fly or take the train to New York City for auditions.
After high school, Damon went off to study at Harvard University. Two years later, it was Affleck’s turn to graduate and he in turn went off to university in Vermont.
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From college to Hollywood
It was during his time at Harvard that Damon wrote a story for one of his classes, which was the early screenplay of the film Good Will Hunting.
He asked Affleck to perform the scenes with him in front of the class.
Damon later moved in with Affleck, who had relocated to LA, and they began working on what would be an Academy Award winning screenplay, which they completed when they were 22 and 20 respectively.
By the time Good Will Hunting was made, the two had enough acting credits to win starring roles in the film, which went on to become a huge success.
Few will forget the moment the two friends went on stage to receive their Oscars for best original screenplay. Affleck was just 25 and Damon was 27.
Professional pals
Since then, the two have continued to work together, even forming their own production companies.
In 2022, they formed Artists Equity. Its first film was 2023’s Air, about the 1984 shoe deal between Nike and Michael Jordan, which starred Affleck and Damon.
And it seems that outside work, they are just as close.
During a 2023 interview on Sunday Today, Damon called Affleck one of the “three most significant partnerships in my life.”
Earlier this year the two shared a touching moment together when Affleck snuck up to surprise Damon as he was sitting at a table with wife Luciana Barroso at the Golden Globe Awards.
Just this month, Damon admitted he ‘can’t imagine’ what it was like for Affleck to live under such intense spotlight.
“I’ve been really lucky in that way… I can’t imagine living under that kind of scrutiny,” he said on the Radio Times Podcast.