Ben Affleck and Matt Damon shared a bank account when they were starting out in order to fund their acting auditions.
Ben Affleck and Matt Damon have been friends for most of their lives, collaborating on projects with one another and even winning an Oscar for writing Good Will Hunting together. Ben Affleck and Matt Damon recently appeared on The Bill Simmons Podcast (via CNBC), revealing that they shared a bank account when they were starting out in the 1980s.
“It was unusual, but we needed the money for auditions,” Matt Damon said, but he did call it “a weird thing in retrospect.” The pair were rooting for each other to succeed so had no trouble sharing an account together. “We were going to help each other and be there for each other,” Ben Affleck said. “It was like, ‘You’re not going to be alone. I’m not going to be alone. Let’s go out there and do this together.’” Depending on the gig Ben Affleck or Matt Damon got, their bank account fluctuated frequently, but pooling their money kept the power from getting shut off. “After doing Germonimo, I probably had 35 grand in the bank,” Damon said. “I was like ‘we’re good for a year.’“
They set rules in place for how the money could be used. “You were allowed to go to [auditions in] New York with the money,” Damon said. “You were allowed to take out $10 and get quarters and go to [the arcade] and play video games. Eventually we were allowed to try to buy beer, which never f**king worked.”
Decades later, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are still good buddies. They’re set to star together in Air, a sports drama which Ben Affleck also directed. The film “reveals the unbelievable game-changing partnership between a then-rookie Michael Jordan and Nike’s fledgling basketball division which revolutionized the world of sports and contemporary culture with the Air Jordan brand. This moving story follows the career-defining gamble of an unconventional team with everything on the line, the uncompromising vision of a mother who knows the worth of her son’s immense talent, and the basketball phenom who would become the greatest of all time.” In addition to Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, Air also stars Viola Davis, Jason Bateman, Chris Tucker, Chris Messina, and more. Air premiered at SXSW last week and will hit theaters on April 5th.