With the premiere of The Rip, the latest collaboration between Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, Hollywood is once again reminded of something increasingly rare in the industry: a lifelong friendship that didn’t fracture under fame, money, or competition – but instead grew stronger with time.
Twenty-eight years after Good Will Hunting turned two unknown kids from Boston into Oscar winners, Damon and Affleck are still betting on each other. And remarkably, the bet keeps paying off.
From Cambridge Kids to Oscar History
“Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are childhood friends… This is their first Academy Award.”
Those words, spoken at the 1998 Oscars, have since become part of Hollywood folklore. Damon was 27. Affleck was just 25. Both still looked like guys who might’ve taken the T to the ceremony. And yet there they were, standing on the biggest stage in cinema, holding the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay – for a movie they wrote together between auditions because no one was offering them roles that excited them.
“We’re just really two young guys who were fortunate enough to be involved with a lot of great people,” Affleck said breathlessly that night, shouting out their mothers in the audience, Damon’s father, and the city of Boston. It was raw, unpolished, and genuine – much like their partnership itself.
What many didn’t realize at the time was that Good Will Hunting wasn’t just a breakout film. It was the product of a friendship that had been forming since childhood.
A Bond Forged Long Before Hollywood
Affleck and Damon met growing up in Cambridge, Massachusetts – Affleck was 8, Damon 10 – living just a few streets apart. They bonded over baseball, neighborhood life, and eventually, acting.
Affleck had already started working professionally as a child actor, but it felt isolating until Damon took an interest.
“Matt gave acting a framework, an integration into the social hierarchy at school,” Affleck once explained. “Before Matt, I was by myself. Acting was a solo activity. No one understood it.”
With Damon, it became something shared – a dream that didn’t feel ridiculous when spoken out loud.
That early sense of partnership would become the foundation of everything that followed.
Fame Without Rivalry
Hollywood is notorious for turning friendships into rivalries, especially when success is scarce. But Damon and Affleck avoided that trap early on.
“I think part of the key is that we didn’t start off in a fundamentally competitive, zero-sum-game way,” Affleck told Entertainment Weekly. “We didn’t feel like one person’s success was taking away from the other.”
That mindset proved crucial. While they moved to Hollywood in the early ’90s with little money – at one point sharing a bank account Damon later described as having “not a lot of money” – they never treated success as something to hoard.
They treated it as something to share.
Still Friends, Still Neighbors at Heart
Today, Affleck is 53. Damon is 55. They’ve won Oscars, starred in blockbuster franchises, endured public scrutiny, divorces, relapses, tabloid chaos, and career reinventions. And yet, in the ways that matter most, their friendship hasn’t changed.
“People treat us differently than they used to,” Affleck once said. “But when I think about Matt and I growing up together and the time we spend together now, I don’t think we’ve changed that much.”
Affleck once laughed about Damon casually emailing him to come over and watch Monday Night Football the same kind of message two lifelong friends might send each other anywhere in America.
“That ‘you want to come over to my house’ kind of thing,” Affleck said, “that’s a great thing to have, especially through the strange process of fame and making movies.”
Business Partners, Still Having Fun
Their latest chapter includes founding their own production studio, Artists Equity, giving them more creative control and allowing them to tell stories on their own terms together.
“A lot of people have friends,” Affleck joked on TODAY while promoting The Rip. “We just happen to be in the same line of work.”
That understatement may be the secret to their longevity. They never built their relationship around Hollywood. Hollywood just happened to become the backdrop.
Why Their Friendship Still Matters
In an industry obsessed with reinvention, reinvention never came at the cost of loyalty for Damon and Affleck. Their story isn’t just about talent or timing – it’s about trust, shared history, and refusing to let success rewrite who you are.
Nearly three decades after Good Will Hunting, the real miracle isn’t that they’re still making movies together.
It’s that, through everything, they’re still just two guys from the same neighborhood rooting for each other, showing up, and proving that in Hollywood, the rarest thing of all might be a friendship that actually lasts.
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