Not his best! Ben Affleck hilariously recalled being cast in Buffy the Vampire Slayer — and revealed that his performance was “so bad” it had to be dubbed over with someone else’s voice.
“The most humiliating thing was one of my earlier parts, I got one line, I had just moved out to L.A., I got a line in a movie and I was playing a basketball player. It was a small film called Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” Affleck, 50, shared during his Thursday, April 13, appearance on The Late Late Show With James Cordon, referring to the 1992 film which inspired the famous TV series. “I just happened to be playing basketball when a werewolf of vampire ran through and I got scared, ’cause he’s scary, and I go, ‘Take the ball!’ or something like that. And I thought my work was good. I was feeling it. I felt authentically afraid.”
The Justice League star shared that he was asked to run the scene “a bunch of times,” but chalked it up to director Fran Rubel Kuzui being “rigorous” until he went to go see the film himself — and realized something wasn’t quite right.
“I went and saw the movie with some friends and I sounded very different,” he quipped. “And I realized right then that they rerecorded my lines. I was so bad, they needed me to be in the scene but the director was just like, ‘I can’t hear the voice again!’ They had to pay someone to come in and say, ‘Hey man, take it.’ Because apparently, I couldn’t say that convincingly enough.”
While it wasn’t his best moment, Affleck, who is currently promoting his latest film Air, showed he had a sense of humor about the incident and joked that the dub “sounds like Chris Tucker” as host James Corden played a clip from the film.
The Massachusetts native — who has since proved his talent in critically acclaimed films including Good Will Hunting, Agro, Dogma and more — is used to taking his less-than-impressive movie moments in stride. In January 2022, he told Entertainment Weekly he was thankful for his role in 2002’s Gigli — in which he starred opposite now-wife Jennifer Lopez — despite the rom-com being a box office flop.
“Interestingly, I learned more about directing on that movie than anything else because Marty [Brest] is a brilliant director, really gifted,” he explained. “It’s not like it’s worse than all … there’s a bunch of horrible movies and in terms of losing money, I’ve had five movies — at least! — that have lost more money than Gigli has.”
The Shakespeare in Love star added that he was grateful the movie introduced him to the art of directing — and to 53-year-old Lopez. “If the reaction to Gigli hadn’t happened, I probably wouldn’t have ultimately decided, ‘I don’t really have any other avenue but to direct movies,’ which has turned out to be the real love of my professional life,” he said. “So, in those ways, it’s a gift. And I did get to meet Jennifer, the relationship with whom has been really meaningful to me in my life.”
The “Waiting for Tonight” singer, for her part, joked that she’d love to make a Gigli sequel if given the opportunity. When asked who makes her laugh the most between takes during Vogue’s “73 Questions” in 2022, she replied, “My husband, Ben.” (The pair were first linked in the early ‘00s, getting engaged in November 2022 but ultimately calling it quits less than a year later. They rekindled their romance in 2021.)
The couple, who tied the knot in two separate ceremonies last year, haven’t worked together since they collaborated on 2004’s Jersey Girl, but are slated to pair up for Unstoppable, a biopic produced by Affleck and pal Matt Damon’s production company and is set to have Lopez as the lead.
For now, however, the Marry Me actress is helping her beau out behind the scenes. Affleck revealed in March that his wife helped him with the script for Air, which tells the story of Michael Jordan’s sneaker deal with Nike.
“She’s brilliant,” he gushed to ET of Lopez at the time. “[She] helps me in every conceivable way.”
