Ben Affleck's Best Movie Roles To Date

The movie that brought Ben Affleck worldwide fame remains one of his top performances. Chuckie Sullivan — the working-class Bostonian and close friend of Will Hunting (Matt Damon) — is a natural boaster. He's broke and poorly educated, but he's inherently amusing, charming, and loyal to his friends. Sure, Will is the absolute hero of Gus Van Sant's classic, but without Chuckie, the climax wouldn't pack such an emotional punch. And Affleck is very aware of his character's crucial importance to the story.

Although he was born in Berkeley, California, Affleck can't deny his Massachusetts roots, which are the pillars of "Good Will Hunting's" authenticity. His accent, the tough guy act, and the foul mouthing perfectly capture Chuckie's personality. He's a low-life nobody who works construction, drinks a lot, and smokes a pack of cigarettes a day. But he won't let his best friend's exceptional talent go to waste the same way just because Will is too afraid to face the possibilities that could bring him a better future. Among other things, their camaraderie and devotion to each other are what makes the 1997 drama so remarkable.

After briefly working together with Ben Affleck in the mid-'90s, Kevin Smith decided to cast him in the leading role of his third movie, "Chasing Amy." As Holden McNeil, he was tasked with a trickier part than the ones he previously played in Smith's "Clerks" and "Mallrats." He portrays a comic book artist who falls in love with a girl who happens to be gay. At first, the writer-director approaches the subject from a comedy angle, but the plot quickly turns into a romantic drama loaded with questions and complicated feelings about gender and sexuality. Holden is a pretty simple guy who finds himself in a difficult situation where expressing and dealing with love turns out to be a tough challenge.

Affleck's performance here is full of tenderness and vulnerability. His emotionally charged monologues and dialogues convey the insecurity and inadequacy his character goes through while trying to do the right thing. Whatever he does — whether good or bad — he always makes us believe that he acts on the impulses and emotions he feels to be true. Smith's screenplay was ahead of its time, but Affleck and his co-stars managed to hit the right notes and bring authenticity to the portrayal of these people, who face something profoundly unusual they have little experience with.

Ben Affleck's latest part in George Clooney's "The Tender Bar" is a welcome delight. He's the main reason the film is somewhat amusing and enjoyable. The script — based on J.R. Moehringer's memoir — might be a little empty and dull, but Uncle Charlie is the highlight of this bittersweet tale.

He's the father figure in the protagonist's life after his real dad took off and left him and his mother when he was little. The plot is set in the 1970s, where Charlie runs a local bar called The Dickens in Long Island. He's the kind of street-smart, self-taught person we'd all love to have growing up. He knows everyone on a first-name basis, talks in a slick way, and has the sort of mindset that entails a lot of hard-earned wisdom. But most importantly, he is a happy and satisfied man who made peace with a modest life — he has no regrets about what he has become. There's an appeal to a character who hasn't achieved anything remarkable yet is totally fine with that. Affleck immerses himself in this role, using his smooth charisma to make us like him in an instant. Despite not being the hero of the story, he's the one we'll remember when everything else fades away in time.

David Fincher's 2014 psychological thriller "Gone Girl" became a modern classic for a reason. It's a complex, dark portrayal of a twisted marriage filled with unthinkable secrets and deadly insanity. In it, Ben Affleck plays Nick Dunne, a bar owner whose wife, Amy (Rosamund Pike), goes missing. The shocking news turns into a media sensation as speculations begin to suggest that Dunne is a sociopath who murdered his own wife. Of course, since this is a Fincher crime epic — based on Gillian Flynn's bestseller novel — the truth is much more complicated.

Affleck's casting for the lead role was a genius move. He's the tall, handsome guy that almost everybody finds amusing. The audience knows him long enough to expect that quality whenever he appears on the screen. However, the fact that nice guys are sometimes rapists and vicious murderers is also at play. Affleck skilfully goes along with this duplicity to keep up the thrilling suspense around the question of whether he's guilty or innocent in the case of Amy's disappearance. But as the story unfolds, we learn that he's not really the person everyone expects him to be. Regardless, Affleck showcases an unusual performance here, which catches us by surprise in the most rewarding way.

"The Accountant" is another double bill of director Gavin O'Connor and Ben Affleck. In the 2016 film, the actor plays Chris Wolff, a highly functioning autistic and forensic accountant who's uncooking the books for some of the most dangerous criminal and terrorist organizations in the world. When he's hired to audit a firm called Living Robotics, he discovers that $61 million was embezzled over the years. Meanwhile, Ray King (J.K. Simmons), the director of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, leads an investigation to reveal Wolff's secret identity and his involvement in the murders of nine members of the Gambino crime family. Eventually, Wolff is forced to go on a run — with authorities and hitmen breathing down his neck — to find a way out of this life-threatening chaos he put himself in.

Despite some plot inconsistencies, Affleck's portrayal of a highly functioning autistic is accurate and believable. He remains emotionally controlled and thoroughly methodical throughout. Although, in the second half, the film's focus shifts to brutal and nail-biting action sequences, which somewhat push the characters out of the spotlight. Nevertheless, Affleck maintains a strong presence that culminates in a dramatic and moving twist in the finale. Chris Wolff is indeed the type of character that we rarely see him take on, and it's a real treat to watch him perform out of his comfort zone.

Kevin Macdonald's 2009 political thriller "State of Play" is based on a British television serial of the same name. In it, Affleck is Congressman Stephen Collins, a military veteran who learns that a female member of his staff was killed by a Washington Metro train. The news hits him hard since he was having an affair with the young woman. When police suggest it was suicide, Collins disagrees and turns to his old college roommate, Cal (Russell Crowe), a Washington Globe investigative reporter. Cal starts to look for clues and people who might've been associated with the dead woman to find out what really happened to her. But later on, the pair discover that this case is a lot more intricate and threatening than they could've imagined.

At first, Affleck's part doesn't seem the type that can easily earn sympathy from the viewers. Yet his agenda and motive to uncover a company named PointCorp that gains billions of dollars from mercenary activities in the Middle East is something we can stand behind and support. He conveys this public figure with fierce vulnerability, despite knowing that he's far from a good human being. Ultimately, this complexity is what makes the performance one of his most intriguing roles.

"Argo," Ben Affleck's third film as a director, was a financial and critical triumph. It was nominated for seven Academy Awards and won three for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Achievement in Film Editing. He cast himself in the lead role of Tony Mendez, who was an American technical operations officer working for the CIA. Mendez led the rescue of six U.S. diplomats who were held hostage in Iran at the end of the 1970s. The feature is loosely based on his memoir and depicts how he organized the shooting of a fake science-fiction film to create an opportunity to get the hostages out of enemy territory.

It's undoubtedly one of Affleck's most significant roles and brought him well-deserved recognition. In an interview with Jake's Takes, the actor-director explained, "One thing that I was pleased about when it ["Argo"] started to play more broadly was that I felt good because I had a movie that was about something more than me." He continued, "It was about this guy, a real hero, and about the work done in our intelligence community. What they go through, and what State Department employees do. I had relevance to real relevance. So, I was extremely relieved and encouraged that people would get to see this, and I hoped I was right that it would spark some debate conversation." Thus "Argo" isn't just one of Affleck's top performances, but it's one of the most important pictures he's ever made.