Ben Affleck has been giving some in-depth interviews to promote Animals, the Netflix film he produced through his Artists Equity company, and he also directed it and stars in it. When Ben is in a mood, this man can talk, and he’s been in that mood throughout the promotion. Most of his Variety interview was about Artists Equity and trying to build a new model for artists to get paid. Ben brings up something well-known but rarely acknowledged, which is that very few actors are making a living purely from acting jobs at this point, and everyone’s expected to have a side-hustle which is their main income. Interestingly, Ben name-checks the Jennifers, his two ex-wives, in that section. Some highlights from Variety:

Are movie theaters back? “Revenue is almost back. Let’s see what happens with “Dune: Part Three” and “Avengers: Doomsday.” I still think we’ll come in short on attendance numbers. Premium formats are creating a delta there, which addresses a peculiarity of this — uniform pricing. There’s one ticket price. I remember thinking back in the day, “They’re charging the same amount to see ‘Armageddon’ and ‘Chasing Amy,’” even though we shot one in Kevin Smith’s backyard and the other at NASA.” I think theatrical is never going to come back to the place it was when it was the only way to see something. It’s why “Gone With the Wind,” I think, is still the movie that has sold the most tickets in history.

It’s harder to be a star now: “There are fewer people who everyone has heard of. When you were in a movie in the ’80s or ’90s or the aughts, a studio invested a lot of money around marketing you as an actor. We all benefited from that. There was a sense you could confer stardom onto certain people. People ask, where are the stars now? Obviously, you have Tom Holland, Jacob Elordi, Zendaya. A lot of them. But there are fewer that everyone in America has heard of. I remember being a kid reading Premiere magazine about what makes a star. It’s getting the audiences to show up. “Cocktail” and “Sleeping With the Enemy” were easy sells because Tom Cruise and Julia Roberts are huge stars that can sell a great movie. But what if a movie is just OK?

One of the goals of Artists Equity: “Another part of our mission with [this model] is to maintain Los Angeles as an important hub for film. [It’s about] wanting to be here. I’m divorced, I have shared custody, and I don’t want to miss these years. My kids are here, and their life is flying by. I don’t want to have to be in Shreveport or New Mexico in order to work. I know some people don’t have the luxury of making those choices. I’m certainly fortunate, but I know from experience that the best crews in the world are in L.A.

Artists Equity helps artists eat. “Artists should be making money. You see it massively in the music business. People — either tacitly or explicitly — are expected to make money elsewhere. Now you’ve got your social media identity. You work to develop that. I’ve seen both Jennifer Lopez and Jennifer Garner do amazing jobs cultivating and accruing value in those spaces. Don’t think that’s not real work. I couldn’t do it. What am I going to do, unbox something?

Getting pap’d with Dunkin Donuts, which led to his Dunkin sponsorship: “You have to recognize the value there. That’s the spirit and nature of media and celebrity interaction now. You have to have a sense of humor and be in on the joke with people. Like how I became a meme for “the beleaguered man,” as my daughter calls it.

The Smoking Ben meme: “That’s how I was feeling. Does anyone have any idea what I had to deal with by 11 a.m. that morning? All of us have moments — you’ve got to be willing to let your guard down about it. It’s about fairness. It’s why we have the word “equity” in the company name. I can’t change the world, but I can change the nature of commerce or the way we work and operate. If you want more control as an artist, you’ve got to be willing to take more responsibility. Even if that means how you’re exploited, on your own terms.

If he could handle coming up in Hollywood these days: “I would not be good at that. I’d be a terrible influencer…I got banned from Instagram twice for impersonating myself. I had six followers. It was my kids and some of their friends. It was just an excuse for me to look at [my kids’] social media accounts. There used to be a time when everything you said or did wasn’t on the permanent record. As you get older, you become aware of what that means. I experienced the whole world and had a whole life in private. I have a real sense of how valuable that is. I think Daniel Day-Lewis and Meryl Streep and Viola Davis and Denzel Washington are brilliant actors. It doesn’t help me appreciate their movies to see what they had for lunch. I realize I sound like an old, out-of-touch person, but I believe that as an actor you have to maintain an illusion.

On Jennifer Lopez not getting Oscar nominations for Hustlers or Kiss of the Spider Woman: “I’m biased. I have an enormous amount of respect and admiration for what she can do. What I’ve found with awards is that sometimes the degree of commercial success for things doesn’t always correlate to my taste. It’s a part of this weird, subjective business that people bring a lot of their own stuff to. I don’t always think the right person won the right award. But guess what? I don’t think you die and go to heaven, and God says, “This was the actual best picture in 1986.” At the end of the day, it’s just a bunch of people voting on movie prizes.

Whether he wore any prosthetics in Gone Girl: “I wore no prosthesis. I’ve only worn one in one film, “Hollywoodland.” It was a nose.

[From Variety]

That last part – if you’ve freeze-framed on the shower scene in Gone Girl, you know why that question was asked. Ben is packing. That’s all I’ll say. There’s a reason why J.Lo completely lost her mind. The J.Lo parts of this interview are interesting too, because he rarely speaks about her or their marriage nowadays. It was a CRIME that she wasn’t nominated for Hustlers, damn it. As for social media and influencing and side-hustles… that’s why it’s so interesting to see celebrities in their 40s and 50s on social media. Some of them clearly have other people running their accounts, and some people are just bad at social media because they simply never learned and didn’t need to. I don’t need to see Meryl’s Insta, you know? Besides, I think “elusivity” is coming back into style, honestly.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images, Backgrid.