Matt Damon said he remained by Ben Affleck’s side during his public struggles in his private life.
The close friends appeared on SiriusXM’s “The Howard Stern Show” on Monday, where Affleck candidly talked about a time when he was drinking “too much.”
Stern also brought up Affleck’s going through a divorce, asking Damon, “Would you please go up to Ben and say, ‘I’m here to help you?'”
Damon replied, “Oh, yeah, our relationship isn’t affected by what people think.”
“I was there for all of it,” he added.
Affleck reflected on Damon’s support.
“It means a lot to me,” he said. “That’s what a true friend is.”
Damon, 55, and Affleck, 53, are famously childhood friends who grew up together in Boston. Stern emphasized that their close friendship was actually a “great romance” and “true love.”
“It’s definitely love,” Affleck said of his feelings for his best friend, noting that the Oscar-winning film “Good Will Hunting” depicts it.
“Especially for young men, really loyal, really close, really intense love relationships with other young men that they grew up with, and often those relationships last a lifetime,” he said.
“I think, at least as young men, we had a better understanding since high school of how important these genuine friendships are and what it means to us and how it defines our identity,” he continued.
Damon also said of his Hollywood career, “We won the lottery. We won it together.”
Affleck credited his friendship with Damon with keeping the two of them “sane.”
“Being famous and successful means you had someone to sit with and go to, ‘Am I crazy or what?'” he explained. “Or say, ‘What are you doing?’
Damon previously expressed sympathy for Affleck during an appearance on the Radio Times Podcast in August 2024, saying he couldn’t imagine “living under that kind of surveillance.”
Affleck has gone through two public divorces, first to Jennifer Garner in 2015 and then to Jennifer Lopez in 2025.
Damon said, “And it’s been that way for 25 years, and we’ve had parallel careers in many ways, so we’ve been lucky to have been exempted from that part[of fame]to a degree.”
Damon has been married to his wife Luciana Bozan since 2005.
