Ben Affleck wants Chris Hemsworth to invite him Down Under – if he can keep his shirt on
Ben Affleck is happy – he’s in love with JLo, he just got to make what is already being slated ‘the best sports movie ever made’ and he’s dreaming of a trip to Australia, but there’s a catch involving Chris Hemsworth.
Entertainment
Don't miss out on the headlines from Entertainment. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Chris Hemsworth take note – invite your mate Matt Damon back to Australia soon, because his best buddy Ben Affleck is dying to come visit.
“I’ve never been to Australia in my whole life,” Affleck tells Insider.
“And Matt’s basically, as far as I can tell, an honorary citizen he is there so much – he’s friends with Chris Hemsworth and I think that shows enormous character of Matt to be friends with a guy that much younger and better looking than him,” he laughs.
“Good in practice – but I don’t want to sit next to Chris Hemsworth in photographs so I applaud Matt.
“Matt is quite good friends with Chris and his family – he loves Australia – and I really want to come and see it because the people that I’ve met from Australia I’ve really liked and gotten along with.
“There’s a wonderful spirit and energy about the people, and certainly Matt raves about it. He’s often said if he could live somewhere, he’s tempted to just go live in Australia.
“My only misgivings about that is that I wouldn’t see him as much.
“But I’d love to come. I’m hoping one day Chris will invite me to come down and stay at his place, as long as I don’t have to take any shirtless pictures next to him.”
Affleck is speaking to Insider ahead of his new movie Air being released next month. He has an hour for the whole world’s press – and a quarter of that is given to the Sunday Telegraph. Far from the famously cranky demeanour captured by cameras at this year’s Grammys with old flame and new bride Jennifer Lopez, he’s chatty and refreshingly thoughtful with his responses.
It’s clear life is good. He’s in love with JLo, he’s happy, and he just got to make what is already being slated ‘the best sports movie ever made’, with his best mate, Matt Damon, who plays Nike’s Sonny Vaccaro – the man responsible for, in the end, signing Michael Jordan.
“I’m terrific, actually. You’re finding me in a very good place. I’m happy for the movie and excited to talk about it, and having a lot of fun and doing a lot of interesting things,” he says.
“So life is good.
“It’s challenging, but it’s good.”
Air, also starring Jason Bateman, Viola Davis and husband Julius Tennon, Air tells the true story of a then flailing Nike company trying to make it big in the competitive world of running shoes by signing standout 18-year-old basketball rookie Michael Jordan.
The backstory on how the Air Jordon shoe – a product still being collected by fans who fork out upwards of $600 for the privilege of ‘being like Mike’ – came to life is a fascinating one. One that got Affleck – who directed and starred in the film – excited.
Because the 50-year-old lived and breathed basketball in the ’80s. And even four decades later, the legend that is Jordan is as big as it ever was. And for good reason, Affleck explains.
“I’ve long been interested in ‘genius' and what makes people different, who can operate at that level, who can achieve things and accomplish things that seem unimaginable to the rest of us mortals – and trying to divine – what is the difference?” he says.
“What is it about him? What is it, on a DNA, cellular level?
“And it’s a hard thing to figure out.
“Michael Jordan was that person for me, from childhood to now, and the movie is, in a lot of ways, obviously about Jordan and what he represents to people – but I also saw it as not unlike The Social Network, where it’s about the inception of a change in the culture of human beings.
“We have become a culture that is entirely dedicated to following and admiring, and almost wanting to assume the identities of those we admire, whether on Instagram or sports or celebrity.
“People have now become synonymous with brands, and it’s a very interesting evolution and change.
“I would say if you could mark a time when that change, when the most significant evolution in that process, occurred it was when Michael Jordan changed sports marketing and sales by association. Rather than saying ‘hey, here comes this great basketball player, he’s gonna wear our shoes, which are the best shoes’, it was ‘our shoes are the best shoes because this person you admire wears them’.”
An interesting part of the movie is that you deliberately don’t see Jordan’s face – because the story, if possible, is bigger than him. An important facet was the role of Jordan’s mother Deloris, played by the one and only Davis – a prerequisite from Jordan himself, Affleck shares – as she brokered the deal that saw the basketball star blur sports and product branding for the first time, making her son a billionaire.
Her strong personality was the true success story – a factor made more poignant for Insider, who had a screening of the film on International Women’s Day.
“That’s the point at which the story began to have real meaning for me,” Affleck agrees.
“I had one conversation with Michael, because no one had bought his rights, and I’m not a person who is comfortable – having had my own smaller version of a life lived in part in the public – of telling someone’s story without at least asking for their blessing and asking them for a perspective and what is important and meaningful to them.
“He talked to me about a number of things … and he talked about his mother.
“And in fact, that was the only casting choice about which he weighed in, and was quite adamant it had to be Viola.
“And once he said that to me, and talked to me a little bit about that experience, it totally reconceived the movie for me and made it much more resonant and powerful, because it became about the role. I mean, when you think about it, it seems obvious, right? But being a man or not having the life that Michael Jordan lived, and not being a professional athlete, or growing up in the culture that Michael grew up in, I didn’t take for granted how incredibly significant the role of the mother was in supporting a person who is going through that process that he went through.
“It became clear to me that actually the protagonist of the story, the central figure of the story, was not Sonny Vaccaro, it was not Michael Jordan, it was Deloris Jordan.
“And I thought, what a great twist, to think you’re seeing a movie about Michael Jordan, and Michael, by his own admission, just said, essentially, ‘she ran things – she made the decisions. She was the boss – and I was a kid’.
“And he acknowledged I thought, in a very candid and beautiful way, how important she was to him and, had it not been for her guidance and support, it would not have worked out for him the way that it did.
“And to this day, he spoke of her with a reverence and an affection that moved me in the conversation and immediately I just thought, ‘that’s what this movie is about – that’s what’s meaningful.”
The inspirational story is one of the making of a champion, with Affleck and Damon’s characters having the same qualities as the superstar they tried desperately, and eventually successfully, to recruit. Don’t give up. Don’t take no for an answer. Have a go. Nothing is impossible. All words Affleck himself tries to live by.
“I was inspired,” Affleck says.
“And not unlike an audience member, with Viola, who’s herself every bit a genius in her field that Michael Jordan is in his. It’s been a goal of mine my whole life (to work with her).
“And I thought, OK, now I maybe have the opportunity that I can get this part to be on the page as significant, as it clearly is in Michael’s heart, which is what I was trying to reflect.”
He describes almost crying through a scene where Damon tries to persuade Davis to sign a deal she knows is unfair to her son. Instead of listening to why, she holds the phone away from her ear – and with quiet resolve – articulates to Damon why her son was worth more.
“What she was asking for was fair, and this was what her son deserves,” he explains.
“And you got the sense – and I as a parent felt this in some ways – we will advocate for things on behalf of our children that sometimes we won’t advocate for on our own behalf. “And I just thought it was incredibly beautiful, and astonishing acting, the likes of which I’d never had the privilege to see live before in my life.”
Woking with Damon, who he wrote and starred in Good Will Hunting with, was magic, he says. The 1997 film favourite earned them an Oscar a year later – the pair for Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor for Robin Williams, which was the late actor’s only Academy Award win. And while he laughed off any suggestion of a possible sequel, it was certainly a ‘moment in time’ that sent the lifelong friends on quite a journey, in a world that loves seeing them on screen together.
“I think there’s an affection that people have for seeing us together. It’s probably a result of the fact that of a phenomenon I’ve discovered, which is, when actors have a connection with one another,” he says of working with Damon.
“And this is a case with Julius and Viola, who were husband and wife and played husband and wife in the movie, there’s something that comes across subconsciously or energetically, and you can feel that.
“Matt and I have been friends since childhood, and our friendship has been forged in all kinds of circumstances, where we’ve been up and down and through as many different kinds of experiences as you can possibly have, and a friendship either breaks under that weight – I think maybe most do – but if it survives, it survives so much stronger.
“We’re going to be friends for the rest of our lives.
“This is the person I would trust with my children if I died.
“This is the person I trust and love most of the world.
“So it was the best experience of my life working with Matt.
“I don’t really want to do movies with anybody else – I just want to keep on working with him because, on personal level, it was just joyful.
“People say there’s the movie gods.
“Sometimes you can work very hard on a movie, have just as many talented people and for some reason it just doesn’t click.
“This one was like few others in my career where everything really just came together in a way that sells.
“If I were a religious person, I would say providential.
“I’m doubly blessed to have the opportunities I have in my life and to be able to work with somebody who I so deeply love and trust and respect, and really would do anything with.
Your life in terms of your work – and work is most of our lives – is defined by the people who we work with.
“And that’s the lesson that I discovered late, but not too late.”
Air will be released on April 5
Join the conversation
Two-time Gold Logie winner dies, aged 93
Stalwart of the Australian screen and two-time Gold Logie winner, Gerard Kennedy has died aged 93.
Read more
Come in spinner: Best places to play two-up in Sydney
Heads or tails? The Daily Telegraph flips you the ultimate interactive guide on where to play two-up across Sydney on Anzac Day.
Read more