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Ben Affleck and Matt Damon have one of the most well-documented bromances in Hollywood thanks to a relationship that stretches back to their high school days and eventually put them on the map thanks to the success of Good Will Hunting.
The duo spent years immersed in the Struggling Actor lifestyle before catching their big break when the script for the movie about a brilliant janitor escaping from his working-class existence in South Boston was turned into a film that grossed more than $225 million worldwide and earned the duo a Best Original Screenplay award at the Oscars.
Affleck and Damon received a very nice check after selling the project to Castle Rock Entertainment, but based on what the former had to say about that windfall, they got a bit of a crash course in how to handle (or, perhaps more accurately, how not to handle) the hundreds of thousands of dollars that came their way.
We got some insight into what unfolded during an interview Drew Barrymore recently conducted with Affleck where she asked him to shed some light on a story concerning the time he and Damon (who was apparently a terrible roommate) supposedly blew through all of the money they had in the joint bank account they shared well into their 20s.
https://twitter.com/DrewBarrymoreTV/status/1649419983158427648
He acknowledged there was some truth to that tale before going into detail, saying:
“When we sold Good Will Hunting, I was like, ‘We are now rich for life. My needs are over. I will never have to work again.’
We sold it for $600,000. We split that—$300,000 each—and then the agents got $30,000.
So we had $270,000, and we paid about $160,000 in taxes, so we had $110,000. We each bought $55,000 Jeep Cherokees and then had $55,000 left, so naturally we decided to rent a $5,000 a-month party house on Glencoe Way by the Hollywood Bowl and we were broke in six months.”
When you consider Affleck has an estimated net worth of around $150 million and Damon clocks in at $170 million, it seems like it all worked out in the end.