‘The Odyssey’ Star Matt Damon Reveals He and Ben Affleck Were Broke Just Months After Winning Their Oscar
Long before Matt Damon was starring in Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’ or running his own production studio, he was a struggling young actor with one enormous stroke of luck: a screenplay he’d written with his childhood best friend Ben Affleck. That script would go on to change both of their lives, and decades later, Damon is still sharing the messier details of what happened right after.
‘Good Will Hunting’ turned Damon and Affleck into overnight sensations in 1997, earning them the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay the following year and launching Damon into a Best Actor nomination for his lead performance. It was the kind of career-making moment most actors only dream about, the sort of windfall that should have set two young stars up for life.
Except it didn’t, at least not immediately. Matt Damon revealed that he and Ben Affleck were broke within roughly a year of selling the ‘Good Will Hunting’ screenplay for $600,000, discussing the fallout during an appearance on the “New Heights” podcast with Jason and Travis Kelce. Damon explained that after taxes, agent fees, and legal costs ate into the payday, the reality of Hollywood’s cut system hit much harder than either of them expected.
Damon broke down the numbers plainly, noting that the pair split the sale, only to watch the total shrink dramatically once professional fees and taxes were subtracted. “So, we sold the screenplay for $600,000 which was just… so much more money than either of us had ever considered,” he said, before admitting that after everything was accounted for, they each walked away with less than $150,000.
Affleck has told a similar version of the story elsewhere, offering an even more granular breakdown of exactly where the money went. He recalled that after the $600,000 sale was split and reduced by agent fees and taxes, the two men each bought a $55,000 Jeep Grand Cherokee before deciding to rent a $5,000-a-month “party house” near the Hollywood Bowl, a decision that left them broke within six months.
That early financial whiplash appears to have left a lasting impression on how Damon and Affleck approach filmmaking now. Damon connected the experience directly to decisions made through Artists Equity, the production studio he co-founded with Affleck, explaining that they now prioritize fighting for reversion rights on their projects rather than accepting flat paydays that leave little long-term upside.
He pointed specifically to Affleck’s experience with ‘The Town’, noting that despite the film going on to earn significant money over the years, Affleck barely profited from it at the time despite writing, directing, and starring in it. That imbalance, Damon suggested, is exactly the kind of arrangement their current studio structure is designed to avoid for future collaborators.
Despite the early financial scare, neither actor’s career suffered long-term damage, with both going on to become two of Hollywood’s most bankable stars in the decades since. Damon is currently riding a wave of attention for his starring role as Odysseus in ‘The Odyssey’, which has become one of the year’s biggest box office success stories.
Looking back at how close two future Oscar winners came to blowing their big break entirely, it’s a reminder that even Hollywood’s biggest success stories rarely come with an instruction manual attached.
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