Matt Damon Opens Up About Supporting Ben Affleck amid His Divorces and Struggles: 'I Was There for All of It'
- - Matt Damon Opens Up About Supporting Ben Affleck amid His Divorces and Struggles: 'I Was There for All of It'
Jack SmartJanuary 12, 2026 at 8:57 PM
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Cindy Ord/Getty
Matt Damon and Ben Affleck at SiriusXM Studios on Jan. 12 -
Ben Affleck and Matt Damon appeared on Sirius XM’s The Howard Stern Show ahead of the release of their latest movie together, The Rip
When Stern asked Damon about supporting Affleck through hard times like divorce and alcohol addiction, Damon said he was “there for all of it”
“That means a lot to me,” Affleck told his longtime friend
Matt Damon and Ben Affleck support each other through thick and thin.
On The Howard Stern Show on Sirius XM on Monday, Jan. 12, the actor-filmmakers discussed their relationship off-screen and on, from their breakout film Good Will Hunting to their latest collaboration, The Rip (on Netflix Jan. 16).
Stern asked the two friends about “when Ben was going through all his problems,” mentioning “divorce” and, “as he admits, he had a problem with alcohol." Addressing Damon, he said, "Could you go to Ben and say, ‘I'm here to help you?’”
“Oh, yeah, our relationship isn’t affected by what people are saying,” Damon, 55, said. “I was there for all of it.”
Affleck, 53, responded with gratitude. “That means a lot to me,” he said to his longtime collaborator. “That's sort of what a real friend is.”
Cindy Ord/Getty
Matt Damon and Ben Affleck at SiriusXM Studios on Jan. 12
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The Oscar-winning duo then reflected on making a splash in Hollywood midway through their twenties. “Your evolution gets kind of stunted at the moment you become famous because the world treats you differently,” said Damon. “I think we were lucky in that we were 25 and 27, so we had a handful of years under our belt where we would walk into a room and not turn any heads.”
In unison, he and Affleck both added, “And nobody gave a s---.”
Affleck, who underwent a highly publicized separation from Jennifer Garner in 2015, announced that he had completed treatment for alcohol addiction a second time in 2017 around the time the two finalized their divorce. He then was married to Jennifer Lopez from 2022 to 2025.
Monica Schipper/Getty; Michael Loccisano/Getty; Matt Winkelmeyer/GA/The Hollywood Reporter via Getty
Jennifer Lopez; Ben Affleck; Jennifer Garner
The Gone Girl star agreed that he and Damon “got into a good place pretty early on,” before the intensity of the public spotlight. “That’s kind of why we’re as sane as we are — to what degree, you may be the judge! But getting famous and successful kind of together, [we had] somebody to turn to and go 'is this f---ing nuts, or what?' Or to say 'what are you doing, man?'"
In a recent video shared by Netflix ahead of the release of The Rip, Affleck and Damon shared the key to more than four decades of friendship after growing up together in Boston. “We were both obsessed with [making movies and acting] from an early age which definitely kind of linked us up," the Bourne Identity star noted. "But it's kind of a weird thing in retrospect, because we came from a city where that wasn't a thing."
Affleck added, "The shared interest, like finding the job you like to do and then you do that with your friends, it's really a nice thing, because you spend so much time at work."
Writer-director Joe Carnahan's The Rip, costarring Steven Yeun, Teyana Taylor, Sasha Calle, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Scott Adkins and Kyle Chandler, is on Netflix Jan. 16.
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