He’s a man whose been characterized by frustrated Hollywood ambitions, a scandalous love life, tabloid headlines and a somewhat cheesy stint in a superhero suit.
You could just as easily be talking about Ben Affleck as you could George Reeves, the actor who played the Man of Steel in the 1950s TV series The Adventures of Superman, except that Reeves’ career and life came to a tragic end with an apparent but still mysterious suicide in 1959. But Affleck appears to have found a far more hopeful road after taking a few years out of the spotlight, putting the Gigli, J.Lo and Daredevil era behind him in favor of an off-screen life as a new husband (to actress Jennifer Garner) and father, and an on-screen life in meatier and more challenging roles—specifically playing the ill-fated Reeves in the noir-tinged drama Hollywoodland.
“When I met him I didn’t know what to expect, but I liked him right away, and I liked his seriousness about the role,” said the film’s director Allen Coulter. “I was mostly struck by how serious he was as an actor and so professional in our initial meeting and that only expanded exponentially as we started the project. I would count him among the very top echelon of the most prepared actors that I’ve ever worked with.”
Affleck sat down with Hollywood.com to discuss the film and how he first succumbed to and ultimately survived his exposure to a particular brand of celebrity kryptonite.
Hollywood.com: You been quoted as saying that you were making an effort to keep a low profile over the last couple of years.
Ben Affleck: You’re right, and you can see how successful I was.
HW: So what’s it like for you to come back into the spotlight now?
BA: It was just more about me not doing some movies for a while and I wanted to sort of take a break and keep things quiet. And I kind of made a decision to just do the kind of movies that I wanted and that I could be proud of being in, and not work for money or work to be famous, or for any of that stuff. I got really lucky that the first movie that I did in that period was this one, which turned out really well. I’m really proud of it, anyway. I really like it. I got to work on the script and work with these extraordinary actors and this wonderful director. It feels great. It’s great to be talking about a movie that I’m really proud of. It’s a really nice feeling.
HW: As you prepared to play him, what was your assessment of the real George Reeves?
BA: George Reeves was an iconic guy because of who he played, and that was in some ways tragic for him. And that very tragedy was a kind of paradox, in the sense that he got the thing that he wished for and ultimately it was very destructive. That is part of what makes the story so good and part of what makes the character so good. The onus was on me and on Allen [Coulter] and on the writers to be consistent with who the guy really was, because there is a sort of burden and responsibility—and I think that even more so, because I think of George as a guy who never really got a fair shake. So I thought that it would be the least that we could do here was to give him his fair shake, finally, that he kind of didn’t get in his career or following his death. So I researched it pretty meticulously. I wanted to play him as authentically as possible, and fortunately he left behind a body of work that I could look at and watch. I saw 104 episodes of the television show, among other things – 52 in color and 52 in black and white. He obviously had other work, like he was in the beginning of Gone With the Wind. I really wanted to try and treat him fairly. So if I screw that up I really have no excuse.
HW: How did you feel about the iconic nature of the role Reeves himself was playing, Superman?
BA: The interesting thing I think the movie really points out, among other things, is the beginning of the conflation of people in television and movies and giant American icons that are important. There is some sense of separation and then the degradation of both. I mean, this is often looked at as a time of innocence, and then after that we lost our innocence, but it’s also like a children’s television show guy in red tights, basically. He is this iconic person of great interest to the country, and when he dies it represents something damaging to people and to children and that sort of highlights, for me, the absurdity in some ways in which we kind of look at these kinds of characters who are put out for drama, for the amusement and entertainment of either adults or children.
HW: Were you attracted about the chance to tell the truth about someone in Hollywood that was misunderstood. Did that strike a particularly personal chord with you?
BA: I was attracted to the project because of Allen, and because of the screenplay, and because of the actors that I was going to get a chance to work with, and because the story itself was pretty great. The way that I got into looking at the character and the things that I identified with him were, among other things, was this idea of being and feeling that you were someone other than what the outside world saw you as and the injuries that he sustained in some ways from that. And there’s just a lot about him that he went through and dealt with as a person that I think a lot of people can identify with. I think that he was an interesting guy who thoroughly lived his life, in that it offered a lot of entries into understanding him.
HW: This movie is about an actor’s life in Hollywood, and not having that life really go as it was planned. Can you talk the frustrations or disappointments about your own life in Hollywood?
BA: There is a line where George Reeves says “It should’ve been enough for a life,” what he had. To me it’s about the condition of humanity whereby it’s never really enough. It’s that feeling, that ambition that drives you to achieve, and for people to invent rockets and to build machines and the industrial age, and it also keeps us perpetually kind of dissatisfied, that sort of grass-is-greener thing. And that those things that at propel us at the same time frustrate us and stifle us, in trying to live and manage those two things. It’s really that contradiction and the contradictory impulses that are universally human that I believe everyone can understand and that are really painful. It’s like in life us going, ‘If I just had this then I would be happy.’ And then finding out that that’s not really the thing, and I think that’s really what’s at the root of it all for me, and I think that it really kind of transcends Hollywood, even though it is a really good example of that kind of thing because it is to the extreme.
HW: Do you think we exist, culturally, in a more invasive period when it comes to Hollywood celebrities?
BA: I think that Hollywood is really different now than what it used to be. It had not become, for better or worse, the kind of cult of personality, culture of celebrity kind of continual, carnivorous, voracious machine of 15 outlets–the internet, bloggers, gossip–there are just additional layers upon layers. Those exist because there are people out there who are demanding that, and so that is a really different, faster, almost immediate news cycle now, and there are more mouths to feed so to speak. Also, ironically, there was a kind of a polite distance then in a certain way. I mean, you were Rock Hudson and everyone knew you were gay, Reeves, interestingly, highlighted the kind of beginning of that period. He got into this car accident and none of the articles mentioned him by actual name. “Superman Crashes Car. Faints at Sight of Own Blood,” and so on. So it was a kind of wry sort of slightly smug, detached, putting-down of people who are supposed to be elevated. And that practice of journalism—which I’m sure none of you practice—grew and has grown over the years. But I think that was the very first beginning of having idols who seemed bigger than everything, and then the treat of it, the perverse thrill was finding out that they weren’t really Superman, that in fact they were human and seeing them be destroyed to prove it. And then lamenting them and looking back on the good things that they did.
HW: In a way, is it the result of a bit of backhanded flattery? That public has invested so deeply in the roles that actors play that it translates into an investment in their personal lives?
BA: You’re invested in the honesty of that drama, of the character and then it stands to reason that whatever you read about the actor additionally in his personal life that I would also be interested in because it’s sort of the same human drama, and in fact it’s the same character. It’s the same face. You kind of become an actor on a soap opera that you have no control over the script or the direction. You just look at the paper everyday and find out what you did in this week’s episode. The actual art of what you do, the actual beauty and the grace and what it takes to do that—people kind of aren’t as interested in, really. It is really interesting for most people, but what actually what happens and what everyone wants to know about is the other side of it. It’s like they don’t want to see the sausage getting made, but you like to eat it and so then it becomes that that becomes interesting. I think it’s a shame because I believe the other stuff is much more interesting.
HW: Has that lessened at all for you during your self-imposed break?
BA: It’s just like, in doing this movie I sort of like lived my own research a little bit, which was nice, playing this part, because I didn’t have to then go around and ask a lot of people what this is like, what this feels like. It’s like the guy from Good Will Hunting playing a guy from Boston. I kind of had a head start on that. It’s nice to have it diminish and be at a period in my life where I started out wanting to be an artist and do stuff that was really beautiful and that I was really proud of. I think that I kind of got cynical and decided that I was going to carve out a niche for myself, set a period of time out and just say “F**k it” and make money and have this and do this. And I did that. But ultimately I found myself at the end of that period to have sort of a horrible feeling, to be trapped inside and part of this whole tabloid situation where my personal life is out there. So just being able to take a couple of years and reassess about what I want to do with my life, what do I want to be, has been great. I have a family. I’m working on stuff I like. I directed this movie now which was extraordinarily terrifying and wonderful and horrible and great all at the same time. So I’m in a nice place.
HW: And so you did sort of start to take control over your career, to elevate the work above the celebrity?
BA: Slowly it’s starting to turn myself into like a day player on a soap opera and giving myself a little bit more room to do other stuff in my life, which is nice. That means not having the golden ring thing that people obsess about, I think, but it’s also the advantage of not having to get where Reeves got to because it’s not like there is a there there. You keep on running on this treadmill and reaching for another movie or another prize or another accolade or someone else to ask for my autograph or another TV appearance. It never gets there. It’s hollow. It’s like a western façade town on the Universal lot. You go, “Oh, look. It looks like the Old West. It’s neat.” But if you there and actually open the doors there is nothing actually inside. It doesn’t matter what’s inside. It just matter what it’s showing you. So that’s how it kind of works, and I’ve done that and getting to the point where–I’m lucky. I got to kind of see that and then say, ‘Okay, well, what do I really want to do?’ In the course of that, I got dinged up plenty, and now there are things that will probably come along that I won’t get the chance to do that I would like to, that being that guy would afford me the opportunity to do.
HW: How being a new father has affected your life?
BA: I love being a father. It’s wonderful. It’s changed my life. It all sounds like platitudes and clichés, and that’s because they’re the truth. It fast became the most important thing in my life, and I kind of reorganized my priorities instantly in a way that feels really good. I love that. My wife is a spectacular mother, a spectacular everything.
HW: Do you have any advice for new parents?
BA: I am not the person to come to for advice. I’ll tell a quick anecdote: two days ago my wife had to go to work and I was there taking care of the baby and I was trying to make sure everything was going to be okay. She came in and said, ‘I’m running out.’ And she gave me the baby. And she said, “Okay, you know how to feed her with the solid food?” I said, “Yes. I know how to feed her.” She said, ‘You take the peaches in the thing and you stir that up and you put that in with a little oatmeal and then put that in with a little bit of the crushed pairs.’ Then she looked at me and said in all seriousness “Is this too complicated?” That’s my wife. Clearly, I should not be offering advice. It actually wasn’t too complicated, but the fact that she thought it might be speaks to something.
