Ben Affleck says Matt Damon's guidance was a 'principal influence' on walking away from Batman role

• Affleck revealed that Damon helped him quit Batman in a chat with Entertainment Weekly.
• "You were a principal influence on that decision," he told his longtime friend.

In a recent interview between Ben Affleck and Matt Damon for Entertainment Weekly, Affleck gave kudos to his longtime friend for making him realize he didn't need to play Batman anymore.

"I talked to you about it and you were a principal influence on that decision," Affleck told Damon in the interview.

"I want to do the things that would bring me joy," he continued. "Then we went and did 'Last Duel' and I had fun every day on this movie."

Affleck and Damon both starred in and cowrote the screenplay for the medieval drama "The Last Duel," alongside Nicole Holofcener.

It marked the first time Affleck and Damon had penned a script together since their 1997 Oscar-winning movie "Good Will Hunting."

"I wasn't the star, I wasn't likable. I was a villain," Affleck said, who plays Count Pierre d'Alençon in the movie. "I wasn't all the things I thought I was supposed to be when I started out and yet it was a wonderful experience. And it was all just stuff that came along that I wasn't chasing."

Affleck hasn't been shy recently to talk about how much he didn't like playing Batman in "Justice League."

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, he said making the blockbuster "was the worst experience," and that the combination of the movie's former director Zack Snyder losing his daughter Autumn to suicide in the middle of film production, and being replaced by Joss Whedon — who has since been accused by stars of the movie of abusive behavior — made the entire thing "awful."

He spoke more about the experience to Damon.

"I had a really nadir experience around 'Justice League' for a lot of different reasons," Affleck said. "Not blaming anybody, there's a lot of things that happened. But really what it was is that I wasn't happy. I didn't like being there. I didn't think it was interesting. And then some really shitty things, awful things happened. But, that's when I was like, I'm not going to do that anymore."

Previous to "Justice League," Affleck starred as the caped crusader in 2016's "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice" and made a cameo in "Suicide Squad" the same year.

His final portrayal of Batman will be in 2022's "The Flash," which will also star Michael Keaton playing his version of the character from the late 1980s.