Ben Affleck Jokes Paying Taxes After “Good Will Hunting” Payday 'Was Like Having an Ex-Wife'
- - Ben Affleck Jokes Paying Taxes After “Good Will Hunting” Payday 'Was Like Having an Ex-Wife'
Virginia ChamleeJanuary 13, 2026 at 3:06 AM
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Matt Damon and Ben Affleck -
Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are opening up about the "wake up call" that came with the success of their 1997 award-winning film Good Will Hunting
Damon and Affleck famously met while they were growing up in Cambridge, Mass., just outside Boston
The two shot to superstardom after co-writing and starring in Good Will Hunting, for which they won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay
Matt Damon and Ben Affleck may have gotten a sudden financial windfall following their 1997 award-winning film Good Will Hunting, but they also got a wake-up call from the IRS.
Speaking on the Monday, January 12 episode of The Howard Stern Show on SiriusXM, Damon, 55, and Affleck, 53, were asked by Stern whether they "blew through" the $600,000 they were paid for the film.
"Well it turns out, Howard, you have to pay these things called taxes," joked Affleck.
Damon echoed: "It was a big wake-up call. We were like, 'We understand this guy gets half, but who else gets half? What's happening?'"
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"It was like having an ex-wife right away – you just divide, divide, divide," joked Affleck, adding, "And that joke is in no way meant to reflect on anyone..."
Ben Affleck was married to Jennifer Garner from 2005 to 2018. After their split, he reunited with his ex-fiancée Jennifer Lopez, who he married in 2022 and divorced in 2025.
Damon and Affleck famously met while they were growing up in Cambridge, Mass., just outside Boston. They pursued acting careers together in their 20s and broke out in Hollywood when they cowrote and costarred in Good Will Hunting, for which they won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.
Affleck and Damon have previously shared that they maintained a joint bank account following the success of the film, and that the $600,000 sum they were given for the selling the script dwindled very quickly.
Speaking on The Drew Barrymore Show in 2023, Affleck said that when they first found out how much money they had been offered, “I was like ‘We are now rich for life. My needs are over. I will never have to work again. I’m rich. Forever.'"
But after they split the check evenly, and removed agent fees and taxes, they were left with around $110,000 each.
“We each bought $55,000 Jeep Cherokees and then had $55,000 left, which naturally we decided to rent a $5,000 a month party house on Glencoe Way up by the Hollywood Bowl and we were broke in 6 months,” Affleck said on The Drew Barrymore Show.
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Ben Affleck and Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting.
Fortunately, their careers have continued growing since, with both landing successful roles thereafter.
The two reflected on their lengthy friendship earlier this month, in a video shared by Netflix on Thursday, Jan. 8 as they promoted their crime thriller, The Rip.
"I think we're lucky, actually, to not have a friendship that's really rooted in rivalry," Affleck said, when the pair were asked to answer if he and Damon have any rivalries in their friendship. "There's friendships that I see or relationships that are so much driven by like, yes, it's part of the friendship, but it's also one-upmanship or rivalry, I think it does drive people but I think it's kind of a corrosive thing for your life ... Having a friend and some solidarity makes it a much more kind of bearable thing."
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Source: “AOL Entertainment”
