Did you know that Ben Affleck and Matt Damon first starred opposite each other in a film released in theaters over thirty years ago, long before “Will Hunting”? Focus.
If we ask you what is the first on-screen collaboration between Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, you will no doubt answer Will Hunting, the feature film by Gus Van Sant released in French cinemas in 1998 and which allowed two men to win the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. Except that’s not the case!
A few months before this Will Hunting which brought them fame (but which also completely ruined them!), Matt Damon had certainly appeared very briefly in the credits of Multiple Mistakes, a romantic comedy by Kevin Smith in which Ben Affleck plays the main male role. But here we reveal the real first association of the two men, which took place much earlier!
In 1993, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, friends for around ten years, were in their infancy as actors. But that year was important: the young Americans both stood out in the credits of the drama La Différence.
The Difference, which immerses the viewer in the United States of the 1950s, tells the story of David Green, a student who, after obtaining a sports scholarship, joins a prestigious private school. He quickly becomes a star of the establishment’s American football team but, faced with anti-Semitism, must hide his Jewish origins.
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“We both auditioned for this film”Ben Affleck recently remembered at the microphone of Vanity Fair. “Matt had a great leading role. I got the role of the brutal anti-Semite with only six lines. (…) When I filmed The Way Back, where I worked with a group of young guys who played basketball players, it really reminded me of how much fun we had on The Difference. Forming a team, rehearsing scenes, the camaraderie of the group…”
The Difference, in addition to Ben Affleck and Matt Damon in their very beginnings, has an astonishing cast. It is thus Brendan Fraser who plays the main role of this work in which also appears Chris O’Donnell, the Robin from Batman & Robin. Note also that the film’s cinematographer is the illustrious Freddie Francis, to whom we owe the photography of Elephant Man, Dune and Martin Scorsese’s Nerves.
Want to discover the feature film La Différence? Good news: it is available on the Paramount+ platform!
The trailer for “Will Hunting”: