Ben Affleck’s rise to fame in Hollywood was a meteoric one, working with Bruce Willis in Armageddon while basking in the surprise success of Good Will Hunting. In fact, it was that rise to fame that caused Willis to have a bit of fun at Affleck’s expense on the set of the Michael Bay disaster movie.
Bruce Willis led the Armageddon cast as the leader of a group of drillers sent to save the human race by drilling into an asteroid in order to blow it up with a nuclear warhead. It’s the sort of chaos you’d expect from one of the best disaster movies of the ’90s. Ben Affleck played one of Willis’s employees, who also happened to be dating his daughter.
Affleck told NBC reporter Bobbie Wygant that he was cast in Armageddon as something close to an “unknown” just after Good Will Hunting wrapped, but gradually became more famous as the film soared at the box office and as a major player in Oscars season. This caused Willis to make a few snide comments.
“The guys would always give me a hard time about it,” said Affleck. “Bruce was always saying: ‘Do you want a bigger trailer now? You think you’re famous now?’ I was leaving to go these awards shows and stuff. I won the Golden Globe while we were shooting.”
Reflecting, Affleck said that, perhaps ironically, making a space movie brought him down to Earth. “It was an interesting thing. One of the things I liked was that I was going to work every day in the same movie with the same great bunch of people, so I kept a very good perspective on things.”
Armageddon would become another hit for Affleck, earning more than $500m at the global box office. At the same time as he became an awards darling with his best movies, he also broke through with some blockbuster success. Probably a good job he had Willis on hand to take him down a few pegs.
If you’re after more from the star, find out our picks for the best Ben Affleck movies and find out how Ben Affleck got one of his best movies because of Google. We’ve also explained why Ben Affleck was the best combination of Batman and Bruce Wayne.