Ben Affleck Had Very Misguided Expectations For ‘Good Will Hunting’

Getty Images/Bob Riha, Jr.

The careers of Ben Affleck and Matt Damon took off when they made the 1997 film Good Will Hunting alongside the late Robin Williams, but that’s not to say it was easy.

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In fact, Affleck indicated the process was at times “kind of scary.”

Affleck and Damon began writing the movie as a way to try to prove themselves in Hollywood.

“The whole thing of Good Will Hunting was really just to make — at the time — a video cassette that was like an acting reel,” Affleck said on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.

Affleck and Damon were childhood friends who wrote the parts for themselves.

“I think we were shocked that it even got released,” Affleck said.

Good Will Hunting

Along with that, Affleck told E! News Rewind that once it was accepted as a Hollywood script, the rest of the process was fairly intimidating.

“It was actually kind of scary because you spend so much time developing the movie and kind of talking about it in theoretical abstract terms,” he said. “… We’re actually going to play these parts now. This is actually gonna happen.”

Damon added that once filming started, he too felt overwhelmed.

“By the time they said action, tears were just falling down my face,” Damon said.

Affleck and Damon won Oscars for Best Screenplay for the movie in 1998. Overall, Good Will Hunting had been nominated for nine Academy Awards.

“There’s that moment where you go, ‘Oh my God, I’m gonna crash into this wall here.’ You know, everything sort of slows down and you’re spinning around,” Affleck said on The Graham Norton Show. “That was how it kind of felt.”

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