Ben Affleck Compares His Own Anger Issues to Batman's: I Bury My Rage, Then It Pops Out in "Stronger Bursts"

"I’m not gonna go into a Wolverine berserker rage, but I do..." actor muses about his latest roles in new interview with London's Sunday Times

By Natalie Finn Sep 15, 2014 11:43 PMTags
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Ben Affleck sees a little bit of himself in Batman, for better or worse.

"I think it's a necessity, historically, in the tradition of these films" to be able to channel deep-rooted anger, the actor said in a recent interview with London's Sunday Times about playing the Caped Crusader in the upcoming Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice.

"For me, anger is so deeply buried and contained that when it does kind of come out, it comes out in stronger bursts," Affleck told the paper. "I tend to be respectful, polite, get along, put up with, put up with, put up with... then, when it finally emerges, it's not something I have a ton of control over. I'm not gonna go into a Wolverine berserker rage, but I do have a, I do..."

"That is an interesting thing that you point out," he noted, seemingly referring to a point made by the writer of the piece, that the Argo director tends to do onscreen anger really well. "That's my personality."

"By the way, that's a character flaw, I think," Affleck added. "I should sit down [when I'm angry] and say ‘Listen, I just wanted to let you know what happened there wasn't OK', instead of going, let it go, let it go, let it go... ‘Ah, that's not a big deal', until finally you just pop!"

But even before we get to see him brood and brood and brood some more—and then pop!—as Batman, which doesn't hit theaters until 2016, he'll be on the big screen Oct. 3 as a suspected wife killer in the David Fincher-directed Gone Girl. And that character has more than a few moments of frustration...
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Both onscreen and off.

"My theory before I worked with David, and it was really reinforced by working with him, was that the first seven takes are kind of to relax," Affleck also told the Sunday Times, acknowledging that Fincher would sometimes put his actors through more than three dozen takes to get a scene just so. "Because there's a self-consciousness we can't get rid of, that somebody clacks the slate and says ‘Action!', and now, all of a sudden, you're supposed to be acting... It just lets the actor breathe."

Affleck also admitted that he's pretty much never satisfied with his own work when he's behind the camera, either. 

"It's very trying for my wife," Affleck said, praising yet again the patience of his excellent sport of a partner, Jennifer Garner. "She's incredibly supportive and kind and patient with this, but I'll get into this thing of like, ‘Oh my God, it's a f--king disaster. This doesn't work, that doesn't work, I don't know what the f--k I'm gonna do.'

"And she'll just say, ‘You said this on the last movie. You said it on the movie before. This is the point at which you go in there and listen to one song over and over again, and rewrite the scenes you don't like.' Then it's almost embarrassing, because she's so on the money."