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Ben Affleck and Matt Damon reveal they bought matching Jeeps at beginning of their careers

‘We both wanted to get a hunter green one,’ Damon recalled

Amber Raiken
New York
Tuesday 11 April 2023 08:15 BST
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Related: Ben Affleck: ‘How do you tell a story about Michael Jordan and never see him?’

Ben Affleck and Matt Damon have revealed that they once bought matching trucks during the early days of their careers.

During a recent interview with IMDb, the actors and their castmates from their new film Air were asked about the one thing that they “really wanted when they first found success in Hollywood”. After Chris Tucker said he wanted a new car when he rose to fame, Affleck agreed and recalled how Damon also wanted to buy the same vehicle as him.

“It was the exact same thing actually for me and Matt, and not only that, we wanted the same car,” he explained. “We both wanted to get the Jeep Grand Cherokee Sport, it was like the really dope, new truck at the time.”

Damon then chimed in, recalling how he and the Gone Girl star decided what colour cars to get.

“We both wanted to get a hunter green one,” he said. “So we flipped a coin and the loser got a black one and the winner got a green one.”

When Air costar Marlon Wayans asked who got the black car, Damon said it was Affleck.

“Then we ended up with, like, his-and-his black and green Jeep trucks,” he said. “And we’d always be like ‘Who’s truck are we going to take?’ Because we lived together.”

Damon poked fun at how he and his former roommate decided which Jeeps to get: “This is the biggest coin toss of our lives!

The two actors have been friends for more than 40 years, appearing in films like Good Will Hunting and The Last Duel together. They’re also starting a production company together called Artists Equity.

The company’s first film, Air, which is directed by Affleck, tells the story of how basketball legend Michael Jordan and his family teamed up with a group of Nike executives to revolutionise the sports business with one historical sneaker deal.

Last month, the pair also opened up about growing up in Boston together during an appearance on The Bill Simmons Podcast. The longtime friends revealed that they shared a joint bank account in the late 1980s to help fund their auditions.

“It was unusual, but we needed the money for auditions,” Damon said, adding that it was “a weird thing in retrospect”.

“We were going to help each other and be there for each other,” Affleck said. “It was like, ‘You’re not going to be alone. I’m not going to be alone. Let’s go out there and do this together.’”

The two friends explained that after either of them booked a job, their salary would be deposited into the account.

“As long as one of us had money, we knew the power wasn’t going to get shut off. After doing [1992’s] Geronimo, I probably had 35 grand in the bank. I was like, ‘We’re good for a year,’” Damon said.

Despite how much work they’ve done together, Affleck has previously said that he “wished” that he’d done more movies with Damon “over the years”.

“We fell prey to this idea that, ‘Well, if you don’t individuate your careers and do your own things, people will always associate you together. That will be limiting,” he told The Hollywood Reporter last month. “That was the advice we got.”

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