- Matt Damon recalled his early relationship with Ben Affleck in "Smartless: On the Road."
- "'You're not gonna get by on your looks,'" Damon told Affleck when he joined their high-school theater.
"Smartless: On the Road" is a six-episode documentary that follows the live taping of actors Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett's podcast, "Smartless."
On the fifth episode of the show, Matt Damon, 52, was the surprise guest star that joined the hosts on stage, where he shared quite a few celebrity anecdotes, including about his early relationship with Ben Affleck.
"I don't think I know this answer, how did you meet Ben Affleck?" Hayes asked Damon.
"I was 10 and he was 8," Damon said. "We grew up 200 yards away from each other and met each other—"
"Just out on the street together?" Bateman cut in.
"Yeah. We used to play little league together and when he got to high school — I was a junior and he was a freshman —and that was when we really started hanging," Damon explained.
Damon said he and Affleck, now 50, were interested in acting and going to Hollywood early in their lives.
According to Damon, when Affleck got to high school, he was already a fairly big star since he had acted in an after-school special.
"When he arrived at the high school, I had to set him straight 'cause I was the lord of that theater department," Damon joked. "And I went up to him, like, first day and pulled him up and was like, 'Hey, you know it's different here in the theater.'"
"You went straight douche right away," Bateman said.
"'You're not gonna get by on your looks,'" Damon said he told Affleck. "And we were both like 5'2''."
Affleck and Damon famously helped each other early in their acting careers, even opening a shared bank account together in high school to split their funds when they were struggling.
Despite "blowing" the $600,000 they made from selling their Oscar-winning 1997 movie "Good Will Hunting," the pair are doing just fine now as two of the most highly sought-after Hollywood actors who recently acted opposite each other in the movie "Air" about Nike developing a sneaker for basketball star Michael Jordan.
In addition to speaking to Damon about his relationship with Affleck, later in the interview, they discussed how Damon got his part in Martin Scorsese's 2006 movie "The Departed" because Brad Pitt gave him the script.
"We were at George Clooney's House in Italy, and Lucy and I were by the pool," Damon said, referring to his wife of 17 years Luciana Barroso, and that Pitt came over with the part of a lifetime.
"Brad sat down next to us and said 'Hey Matty, you wanna do a Martin Scorsese movie?'" Damon recalled. "And I was like 'Yeah' and he was like 'No, I'm actually serious.' I'm like, 'What are you actually talking about?'"
"Dropped the script on your towel right then?" Bateman joked, before asking, "Did you at any point say, 'Hey, hang on a second, bruh, why aren't you playing this part?'"
"He felt like he had aged out of it," Damon explained. "He's just unbelievably generous. And he goes, 'Nah, I think it'd be better if you did it.'"
"Smartless: On the Road" is currently streaming on Max, HBO's streaming website.