Matt Damon has said watching a documentary about The Beatles made him commit to working with his best friend and frequent co-star Ben Affleck more often.
The two actors broke through in Hollywood after writing and starring in Good Will Hunting, which won the pair an Oscar for their script. Since then, both men have become stars in their own right but only acted together sporadically until recently. In the last four years they have made three films together – period drama The Last Duel, sports biopic Air and forthcoming action thriller The Rip.
In a new interview with GQ, Damon revealed his motivation to keep working with Affleck came after watching Peter Jackson’s 2021 documentary The Beatles: Get Back. The miniseries ends with a title card saying the group never worked together again and an emotional Damon realised he needed to continue working with his friend.
“Who cares if we oversaturate the marketplace with movies we’re both in?” he said of their frequent collaborations. “We’re crazy if we don’t take advantage of the fact that we are both still here and able to do this.”
In the same interview, Affleck praised Damon’s abilities in front of the camera. “Every time I act with Matt is a humbling experience,” he said, “because I learn to appreciate further just how good an actor he is. He is so understated, so real and so honest — it’s the opposite of a ‘showy’ performance, and I think what he does is more difficult.”
He continued: “When you know someone as long as I’ve known Matt, you develop a pretty good sense of what is real and what isn’t and it’s almost impossible to catch Matt acting. He is really a master of realism and it’s something I deeply admire about him. One of many things.”
The Rip, which sees the actors play cops who discover a secret stash of millions of dollars, arrives on Netflix on January 16, 2026.
Next year, Damon will play the lead in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, which recently sold out presales for screenings a year before the film opens. As for Affleck, in April he revealed he has “lost interest” in superhero movies, adding that he found playing Batman “excruciating”.