Ben Affleck arrived for the interview with neither the swagger of Bruce Wayne, nor the bravado of Batman, just with a quiet apology for postponing this conversation, planned for the day before, when he said he’d come down with a migraine.
“It would have been a delirious interview,” he said through a hangdog smile. “I don’t know that it would have been good for either one of us.”
This is a feverish, perplexing time for the 43-year-old actor. Consider the contradictory strands of his life and career that are coinciding for him, and you may find yourself envying, pitying and disliking him all at once.
The star of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, which is Warner Bros’s $250 million moonshot, painstakingly engineered to begin a new, multi-film franchise that is based on the DC Comics characters and to compete with the movies its rivals at Marvel have been making for nearly a decade.
For Affleck, the dual role of Batman and his wealthy, womanising alter ego, Bruce Wayne, is a straight-ahead bid for marquee-idol status after the 2014 thriller Gone Girl, which cast him as a dysfunctional husband caught in a complex revenge plot.
But this popcorn fare is also a somewhat bewildering choice for someone with an increasingly prestigious reputation as a filmmaker in his own right, one who directed and starred in Argo, which won the Academy Award for best picture in 2013. While fans of superhero movies always grouse about their casting, the selection of Affleck for Batman v Superman seemed to arouse an especially vehement and personal animus.
The comic-book blockbuster has shone an intense spotlight on Affleck following the announcement that he and his wife, Jennifer Garner, plan to divorce after a 10-year marriage. Amid a torrent of tabloid reports alleging bad behaviour, infidelity and questionable tattoos, he finds himself at maximum attention at an especially humbling moment.
“It never seems like a great time to have your privacy invaded,” Affleck said warily. “Obviously this is a particularly hard time.”
And though he said he could not pinpoint why he chose to play Batman right now, he did offer a broader theory on the parts that currently appeal to him.
When he watches other movies that strain to make their protagonists likable and valorous, Affleck said: “I find that boring. Instead, I think it’s interesting how we manage the best version of ourselves, despite our flaws and our weaknesses and our sometime tendencies to do the wrong thing.”
Affleck has also realised that for all of his Hollywood success, some part of him will always feels like a relentless striver who must prove, through his work, that he has a right to be there. “That never goes away,” he said. “All these habits that we develop, that help us at some point, they have flip sides. In this case, it’s hard to turn that feeling off.” Addressing himself, he added, “It’s OK to just chill for a second.”
Affleck, his hair now streaked with gray, and his forearms bulging through T-shirt sleeves to reveal hints of red-and-yellow tattoo ink on one biceps, said he was not interested in a “down-the-middle version” of the hero. But he was won over by director Zack Snyder’s presentation — further emphasised in a revision of the script by Chris Terrio, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of Argo — of Batman as a vengeful vigilante still haunted by the murders of his parents. Having seen the devastation already brought to Metropolis, he is driven to extremes by his fear of the further havoc Superman could wreak.
“He’s living in this gray zone,” Affleck said of his Batman. “He’s more broken, not slick. He’s filling the hole in his soul with these increasingly morally questionable nighttime excursions — fighting crime as well as by being this playboy.”
With a chuckle, he added: “You wonder, is this healthy?” Affleck’s Batman v Superman co-stars spoke respectfully about his portrayal of a melancholy caped crusader. Henry Cavill, who plays Superman, said: “There’s some real pain buried in there, in the soul of this Batman, yet it’s covered with scar tissue. There’s some bitterness, which, if dealt with poorly, can go down a bad road.”
Jeremy Irons, who plays Bruce Wayne’s loyal aide, Alfred, said that beneath all the special effects and high-tech trappings of the film, Affleck seemed drawn to the mythical, larger-than-life qualities of the title champions.
“They do represent big, emotional ideas that stand behind America as a country,” Irons said. “I think a man like Ben needs to feel that he’s not just earning parts, but he’s actually telling a story that is worth mentioning.”
Affleck said he took the role partly to please his 4-year-old son, Samuel, who is already a loyal Bat-fan. “He knows that I am Batman,” Affleck said. “It’s a mixed blessing. He also thinks that for some reason — I don’t know if it’s the colour combination or whatever — that the FedEx guy is the Joker.”