Both Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck have been some of the most influential actors throughout their respective careers. Yet, while the former was the first one to win recognition in the entertainment industry among the two of them, the latter seemingly defeated the now-retired actor when it came to the Oscars race.
And as it turned out, Affleck winning the first-ever Academy Award of his career happened right around the time when he and Willis were working on their only film together, 1998’s Armageddon. This is why the retired actor was always mocking his younger co-star during their time working together and gave him a hard time for having earned such immaculate success so soon!
Bruce Willis Brutally Mocked Ben Affleck While Working on Armageddon
Back in 1997, right as Affleck was done working on Good Will Hunting, he was cast as A.J. Frost in Michael Bay’s 1998 sci-fi/action that the critics failed but most fans consider a great piece of work nonetheless, Armageddon. Since his 1997 masterpiece was yet to be released, Affleck was still a “relative unknown” for the Armageddon cast.
Thus, when fame suddenly hit him in the face as his $10 million budgeted movie with Matt Damon earned critical global acclaim, everyone was left flabbergasted. And because of this very sudden and unexpected fame, the rest of the Armageddon cast got an excellent reason to give the Gone Girl star a hard time for something as well.
Majorly, out of the entire cast, it was the film’s protagonist Harry S. Stamper portrayer Willis who mocked his younger co-star the most. As Affleck shared during an interview while promoting Armageddon and still riding high on the waves of the film he starred as Chuckie Sullivan in (via The Bobbie Wygant Archive | YouTube):
“I became [famous] as the movie progressed, and the guys would always give me a hard time about it. Like, Bruce [Willis] was always saying, ‘What, do you want a bigger trailer now? You think you’re famous now?’ (Laughs) But, you know, I was leaving to go to these award shows and stuff. I won the Golden Globe while we were still shooting, and it was an interesting thing.”
However, even as “the guys” were hell-bent on giving him a hard time for his newly found fame throughout the period they worked on Armageddon, the Argo actor was still as greatly influenced by them as ever. Explaining how “going to work every day in the same movie with the same great bunch of people” eventually “kept me on a very good perspective on things,” Ben Affleck said:
“I really liked all these guys. A lot of times in junkets, people sit there and go, ‘So and so is great, so and so is great.’ I can honestly tell you that I really enjoyed working with every single one of these guys. Except Michael Bay, who, occasionally, is a little nuts, but (laughs) besides that, everyone else is really, really sweet. And Michael’s fun too, you just have to know how to wrangle him.”
Yet, what’s even more adorable than this sarcastic inside bond that the cast of Armageddon shared was the fact that even Affleck himself couldn’t wrap his head around the fact that he became famous before Armageddon even hit the cinemas!
Ben Affleck Expected Armageddon to Become a “Nationwide Movie” Instead of Good Will Hunting
Continuing in the interview, Affleck then explained how he expected his career to launch through Armageddon instead of the film that granted him his first-ever Academy Award for Best Screenplay, calling it a “strange experience” when it didn’t. Sharing how he found it “weird” that he earned that fame “right after I finished [working on] Armageddon,” he said:
“I thought that Armageddon would be the movie that first, sort of, you know, was a kind of nationwide movie because all the other movies I did played in selected urban theaters – independent movies, that kind of thing; or else, just plain old weren’t successful. But then Good Will Hunting came out, and sort of preempted that, so it was a strange experience.”
Adding to this was the exceptional experience and “honor” of winning the first Oscar of his entire career, which had him “really surprised” because “we couldn’t believe they even let us in the door, much less gave us statues!” To put it in a nutshell, even Affleck himself couldn’t believe his newfound fame – the very same thing that compelled Bruce Willis to troll him around!
You can stream Good Will Hunting on Netflix and Armageddon on Prime Video.
