Ben Affleck and Matt Damon experienced a meteoric rise in Hollywood after winning at the Oscars for writing one of the best ’90s movies: Good Will Hunting. Naturally, this success came with a hefty bit of cash for the young stars, which obviously they were very frugal and sensible with. Right?
Well, Affleck admitted on a recent episode of The Drew Barrymore Show that he and Damon weren’t as careful with their first big pay-cheque for one of their best movies as they probably should have been. Uh oh!
Affleck appeared on the show to promote his movie Air, in which he directs Damon and also stars as Nike co-founder Phil Knight. He’s better with his money now but, back in the days when he and Damon shared a bank account, things went a bit awry.
He said: “We sold it for $600,000. We split that, $300,000 each, and then the agents got $30,000, so we had $270,000. We paid about $160,000 in taxes so we had $110,000, each bought $55,000 Jeep Cherokees and then had $55,000 left. Naturally we decided to rent a $5,000 a month party house on Glencoe Way by the Hollywood Bowl and we were broke in six months.”
Fortunately, the success of the best Ben Affleck movies and the best Matt Damon movies since then has meant that they’ve both had plenty of large windfalls. They’re probably not struggling for cash these days.
Good Will Hunting, though, remains one of the best drama movies ever made. There’s no wonder it put these two young stars on the map, even if they made short work of the cash they were handed as a result.
Check out our Air review for more on the duo’s latest movie.