Ben Affleck Quotes & Sayings

Everyone's entitled to express their political beliefs. I don't presume to tell anybody who to vote for. I am comfortable telling people what my opinions are. — Ben Affleck

I've consciously taken on material that's a bit too much for me but not an overreach. The first movie, just about performances. 'The Town,' I learned how to work broader material, develop tension, direct bigger scenes, action sequences. 'Argo,' I experimented with film stock, widened the scope of my geography. — Ben Affleck

Its not who you love. Its how. — Ben Affleck

Clearly, there's a real onus on you to do something correctly when everybody, at least in the United States, had a really clear, specific idea of what this guy looked like - and even more so, what he looked like as Clark Kent and as Superman. You have this whole vast audience of people who would be acutely aware of any deviation whatsoever and probably holding you to a slightly higher standard as a result. — Ben Affleck

Well I've never used that phrase before, but yes she is bootylicious. — Ben Affleck

Studios are used to have an investment in you, an actual, literal investment in an actor. You paid them some money, you had a contract with them and you were almost like a commodity. — Ben Affleck

I'm human, just like anybody else. — Ben Affleck

No matter how much you change, you still got to pay the price for the things you've done. — Ben Affleck

I've learned to think, I may succeed or fail, but I'm going to do so on the merit of my own instincts. — Ben Affleck

Marriage hasn't been my thing. But gay people, knock yourselves out! — Ben Affleck

I remember back when I was a kid there was a comic strip called Plastic Man. His body was elastic and he could make his extremities as long as he wanted. As a youngster I didn't fully appreciate. But I'm now thinking Plastic Man was probably pretty popular with the ladies. — Ben Affleck

The trap for an actor is that you become too successful at what you're trying to do, and you can find yourself stuck there. — Ben Affleck

I have definitely noticed that I care less about certain things. Other actors are like: "You can't do that", or "You can't do this. This will position you in the wrong way." That's not my thing. And obviously so, because you can see I don't craft or cultivate my career. — Ben Affleck

I knew I had to get out of Boston and stop making movies there, at least for one movie, otherwise no one would ever consider me for a movie that took place south of Providence. — Ben Affleck

If you think Hollywood is depressing and corrupt, politics is really depressing and corrupt
and fueled even more than Hollywood by money
if that's possible. — Ben Affleck

You have to be kind to people. Treat them decently. There's no excuse for not. — Ben Affleck

Not that it entirely matters: There is a perception that all actors make their movies. A lot of people assume you're responsible. George Clooney told me actors get all of the blame and all the credit. — Ben Affleck

I've never held myself up particularly high when I had movies that worked, and I never held myself all that low when I had failures. — Ben Affleck

If I ever woke up with a dead hooker in my hotel room, Matt would be the first person I'd call. — Ben Affleck

One guy told me I was a great actor, I just would never be on the cover of a magazine. — Ben Affleck

I want to thank my wife who I don't normally usually associate with Iran. I want to thank you for working on our marriage for 10 Christmases. It's good. It is work, but it's the best kind of work, and there's no one I'd rather work with! — Ben Affleck

When I look up at the screen and see myself I always have to laugh. Not because I think I'm doing a horrible job, quite the contrary, I just feel it's so surreal to feel like one person can entertain so many at one time. — Ben Affleck

It's been reinforced to me, and it's a little cliche, but I've learned that you can't make a movie that even works, much less that's good, without really good writing and really good acting. That lesson has led me to not be distracted, so much, by the other stuff going on in filmmaking and to focus on the essence of a story, and the words and the events and the way that those are interpreted by the actors. That philosophy has taken me to a place that I really like. — Ben Affleck

There's a lot of crazy, weird people out there. It's an ugly world. — Ben Affleck

There is currency to celebrity, or celebrity is a currency ... You can spend it in a lot of ways, or you can squander it. You can be taxed, as well. I really started thinking long and hard about how to use that currency as long as I had it. — Ben Affleck

On the day he had colonic irrigation: 'I feel I lost my virginity that day in so many ways.' — Ben Affleck

My movies are unadorned, they're not particularly fancy, I think they're kind of workmanlike in some ways, focusing on the writing and the acting. — Ben Affleck

I recognize that Hollywood is not about seniority. Often it's not even a meritocracy. It's about what you did yesterday. You have a couple of misses, and suddenly it's impossible to find a hit. So the swings are gigantic. But I've always understood it as such, and navigated it as such. — Ben Affleck

Yes, I'm going to be the President of the United States. You know why? You think you can get chicks by being in the movies? You can really get chicks by being the President. — Ben Affleck

I'm sure I can make a movie that doesn't feel like a seventies movie! But the truth is, that's my favorite era in American filmmaking. To me, those were the great years. — Ben Affleck

All I do, really, is go to work and try to be professional, be on time and be prepared. — Ben Affleck

It's wrong and disgusting to follow children around and take their picture and sell it for money. — Ben Affleck

If you want to be able to use the powers of Flash and Wonder Woman and Cyborg, you have to have bad guys who are up to snuff and give them what they can really kind of get their cars out on the track and open up the accelerator a little bit. — Ben Affleck

I like that best as I am so hairy. — Ben Affleck

The first 'Star Wars' movie had come out in 1977 and had become this huge phenomenon with all the toys and everything - it just kind of swept America. But internationally, it was also a big deal. — Ben Affleck

The first day of 'The Town' was one of the most satisfying days of my career. — Ben Affleck

I kinda see my current position like this: Here's your five minutes in the toy store, so you gotta do all the good movies you can before 'Chuck Woolery' rings the bell. — Ben Affleck

I like to think that if I were gay I would be out. Rupert Everett-style. — Ben Affleck

I have three women in the house. I get to be wrong three times a day. — Ben Affleck

I simply asked if I could have a go at adapting a screenplay. But I did not want any money, in case I failed because I did not want a script out there with my name on it that might be completely dysfunctional. — Ben Affleck

I like roundtables because you can talk more directly to people. And you also can get kind of a vibe on what a journalist's take is on something, and have a conversation with them more. — Ben Affleck

It was a dreamlike time for me from December 1997 to March of '98. Before that, I was basically unknown. Then, bang! The starting gun fired, and everybody just started running. It was learn-on-the-job. And there were more opportunities for work than I had time to do them. — Ben Affleck

I've finally learnt how to say, 'No comment'. To appear in the tabloids is a real learning curve and a steep one at that. You had better learn quick or you get burnt. — Ben Affleck

I'm not the most loathsome man in the world. I've dropped to number nine. — Ben Affleck

We wanted to show people what it was like in one of those neighbourhoods that they would never have access to, in bars that they would be too scared to go into, and a world that they would never get to see. All of that is something really unusual and rare and kind of fascinating. And the only way to do that and to make it really worthwhile was that it had to be authentic. We dedicated a lot of time and energy to making that right and real. So we found basically the worst locations that we could. — Ben Affleck

I like acting for myself as a director. I act and I know that I'll have a chance to have some say in what gets used and that I'll be able to give myself enough takes and be on the same page as myself about how the scene should play. — Ben Affleck

In our culture, we get very much into shorthanding people. And I got shorthanded as That Guy: Jennifer Lopez, movies bombed, therefore he must be a sort of thoughtless dilettante, solipsistic consumer blahblahblah. It's hard to shake those sort of narratives. — Ben Affleck

When you hire great actors, you're lucky, so you just try to create an atmosphere where they can succeed and relax and take risks. You're happy that you get to watch them at the monitor and that your name is on the director's chair. — Ben Affleck

Narcissism is the part of my personality that I am the least proud of, and I certainly don't like to see it highlighted in everybody else I meet. — Ben Affleck

There's something really great and romantic about being poor and sleeping on couches. — Ben Affleck

One of the things it channelled in me was that experience that I'd had of wearing a big red leather thing on my upper torso in Daredevil with a mask I couldn't see through and an outfit that completely inhibited movement, feeling humiliated and like a fool. I just recalled that. — Ben Affleck

My kids aren't celebrities. They never made that bargain. We were offered a lot of money to sell pictures of our kids when they were born. You'll notice there aren't any. I make no judgment about people who decide differently; a lot of them give the money to charity. For me, it was a matter of principle. — Ben Affleck

I learned that as a director, you're around all these talented people, so you have this window that all these really good ideas can come in to help your movie, so you're crazy to close them. You need to be inspiring people, engaging people. There are lots of people who are really good at their jobs but might not know or feel like they want to come up to people and get them to participate and want to do their best. — Ben Affleck

I find forgiveness to be really healthy. — Ben Affleck

People of similar political persuasions tend to flock together. — Ben Affleck

I'm a writer. An amateur photographer. An actor. — Ben Affleck

I'm very insecure. I'm human, just like anybody else. — Ben Affleck

I really think that everybody would like to be an actor. Why wouldn't they? It's great work if you can get it. The one thing that prevents most people from saying, 'I'm just gonna go to Hollywood!' is that it seems unrealistic. — Ben Affleck

I went to the University of Vermont because I had a kind of unrequited love for this high school girlfriend. She wasn't even at the University but at another school nearby. But I thought if went to a school near her, just maybe ... I was really remedial about girls in so many ways. — Ben Affleck

I didn't do anything for two years but work on 'Gone Baby Gone,' and it was miserable and hard, but at the end? It is a good movie. I liked it very much. If it had been dismissed and deemed worthless, it would been definitely devastating. But that didn't happen. — Ben Affleck

I never know what my next move will be in Hollywood. It's such an unpredictable town. People get jaded and lost and I've been able to stay a float. I think the next logical step in my career would be to start my own filmmaking empire like (Harvey Weinstein) and (Bob Weinstein) did so many years ago. I think if only the unions weren't so strict in Boston, I'd set up shop there and make films of a certain quality you don't see represented these days. I'm full of ideas and dreams. — Ben Affleck

People ascribe a certain kind of silliness to the movie business. Everybody feels like, "In the movies, they do crazy stuff." — Ben Affleck

Making movies has become such a golden ring, and it's all such a big business, that the rewards system has gotten totally out of whack. Suddenly, you're treated in a manner befitting someone who is actually an important person. — Ben Affleck

The first thing that I really understood politically and was old enough to get was the failed assassination attempt on Reagan. — Ben Affleck

I have a lot of influences. I like to sit down with the cinematographer a month before, and we'll watch pieces of 20 or 30 movies. You're basically the sum of all the experiences you've ever had, and they're sort of shaken up in you and reproduced in the things you create, and that includes seeing movies. — Ben Affleck

When I watch a guy I know is a big Republican, part of me thinks I probably wouldn't like this person if I met him, or we would have different opinions. — Ben Affleck

My mother went to Radcliffe, and rather than just trying to get rich, she wanted to be a teacher and taught for over 30 years in the public schools. She's definitely got some war stories. — Ben Affleck

No actor forgets the times he couldn't get a job. I think everyone doing this operates from that fear. You don't want that momentum to stop when you get it — Ben Affleck

A friend of my mom's was a casting director so, really as kind of a lark, I had a couple of acting jobs that had just enough exposure to give me the option to continue if I wanted to. I followed through with it. — Ben Affleck

Jen came first, and then they wanted to cast somebody that would ... Kevin liked the idea of having a kind of The Ghost of That Character kind of haunt the movie in a way throughout, by having Raquel look so much like her. And also, it was sort of serendipity. I mean, she was also the best actress. I mean, as you can see Raquel has a pretty appealing, engaging kind of precocious, sparkly quality that's ... it was just luck really that she happened to the film. — Ben Affleck

People decided that I was the frat guy, even though I've never been inside a fraternity, or the guy who beat them up at school, even though that wasn't me at all. — Ben Affleck

You know George M. Steinbrenner III is the center of all evil in the universe. — Ben Affleck

I really feel that's part of why audiences go to movies now is to take you to a world you have no access to, whether it's the world of Avengers or Middle-earth or bars in Boston you would be afraid to go into. You see characters there - they aren't hobbits but they're close. — Ben Affleck

A sale is made on every call you make. Either you sell the client some stock or he sells you a reason he can't. Either way a sale is made, the only question is: Who is gonna close? — Ben Affleck

I hate the whole reluctant sex-symbol thing. It's such bull. You see these dudes greased up, in their underwear, talking about how they don't want to be a sex symbol. — Ben Affleck

I thought I could rely on the plot in the novel and fill in the colour between the lines, but I made a mistake with that assumption. It was really, really hard because you pull a few things apart and then you realise how everything relies on everything else and it can all fall apart. — Ben Affleck

The value of work, and of always learning something new, and what it takes to achieve excellence. I really believe in those things that you have to dedicate yourself and spend time, that excellence is elusive. It's a little maddening, to try to have that level of discipline in your life, and I don't succeed all the time. But I do try. — Ben Affleck

My father has positional vertigo, and if he flies he gets really dizzy, so he has to drive out to California, which he does a couple times a year. We talk, but we e-mail mostly. — Ben Affleck

Affleck was the bomb in Phantoms. — Ben Affleck

God help me if I ever do another movie with an explosion in it. If you see me in a movie where stuff is exploding you'll know I've lost all my money. — Ben Affleck

Nobody I represent is pretending to be the pope or a role model for young people. People have to live their lives. They have the right to smoke if they want. — Ben Affleck

Such a senseless and tragic day. My family and I send our love to our beloved and resilient Boston. — Ben Affleck

I just feel like sometimes I'm a force to be dealt with. My talents are sometimes overused and also sometimes underused. It's not easy being me. — Ben Affleck

Matt and I have set a date. Matt and I will tie the knot New Years Day in the town of Swampscott, Massachusetts. Reserve your hotel rooms now. I will be having a gay marriage. — Ben Affleck

Rumors about me? Calista Flockhart, Pam Anderson, and Matt Damon. That's who I'm dating. — Ben Affleck

Every single director-actor I talked to, from Warren Beatty to Clint Eastwood to George Clooney, said the biggest mistake they made is not shooting enough footage of themselves. — Ben Affleck

See, the sad thing about a guy like you is, in 50 years you're gonna start doin' some thinkin' on your own and you're going to come up with the fact that there are two certainties in life: one, don't do that, and two, you dropped 150 grand on a fuckin' education you could have got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library! — Ben Affleck

My mother gets all mad at me if I stay in a hotel. I'm 31-years-old, and I don't want to sleep on a sleeping bag down in the basement. It's humiliating. — Ben Affleck

It's much nicer to be praised than to be damned. But you have to have a certain sense of your own priorities and ideas about what works and what doesn't because otherwise, if you're just looking for eternal validation all the time, you can be motivated by the wrong things and I don't think it's as personally satisfying in your own work. — Ben Affleck

There is nothing worse that a thirteen-year-old boy. You're embarrassed by your parents, and you're trying to find your independance because, deep inside, you are so dependent on your mom. — Ben Affleck

I'm in the worst place you can be. I sell magazines and not movie tickets. — Ben Affleck

No matter what you're doing, if you're trying to make a movie, you need to be working with people that are really good and who make you better. — Ben Affleck

I lived with this tremendous fear of failure because my father was a playwright and a director, and I think he did a couple of things as a child as an actor as well, and he ... he failed, basically. — Ben Affleck

When you are in your 20s and you're not married with kids, you're having fun. But when you're in your 30s and you're not married and don't have kids, you begin to develop a Peter Pan complex. As you grow older, you have more responsibilities and you have to step up to them. — Ben Affleck

I've seen high and lows. When things go well that doesn't make me feel like some genius. Nor will I allow the next disappointment to make me feel like a complete failure. — Ben Affleck

You have to look also to the media, where you have a vast majority of the loudest and most influential political voices in America media from people who came from the entertainment world. — Ben Affleck

There's a lot of noise in the world, and the Internet magnifies that energy. — Ben Affleck

What happens is this sort of bleed-over from the tabloids across your movie work. You go to a movie, you only go once. But the tabloids and Internet are everywhere. You can really subsume the public image of somebody. — Ben Affleck

You can say what you want about me. You can yell at me with a video camera and be TMZ. You can follow me around and take pictures all you want. I don't care. — Ben Affleck

On playing Batman and his daughter: If I was doing the sequel to Frozen I would be a hero. My two older daughters could give a sh-t about Batman and they've now passed that affection onto my son. He's always like, 'Papa, can I watch Frozen?' And I'm like, 'No, dude, it's not on again!'. — Ben Affleck