We'd hoped he'd be an actor, but he wants to be a star

By Ty Burr, Globe Staff, 8/17/2003

It is fashionable at the moment to loathe Ben Affleck. To be honest, the guy makes it easy. What has been less noted is the Matt Damon corollary to the I-Hate-Ben uprising: the unexpressed but tangible feeling that Affleck's "Good Will Hunting" buddy has gone on to make more interesting acting choices, has stayed modest and circumspect, has refrained from becoming a whopping pop-culture pain.

This is about more than the possibility that Damon will be hoisting a mid-career Best Actor statue around the time that Affleck is starring in a production of "The Fantasticks" at a New Jersey dinner theater. This is about the hope. Affleck may be charmingly self-deprecating on a talk show and Damon, for all we know, may steal nickels from blind street beggars, but none of that matters. We root for one to fall and the other to rise.

Why so many people feel this way speaks to the difference between an "actor" and a "star," and to the differing expectations we bring to those concepts. In the public perception, an actor is a craftsman, one whose real self remains irrelevant to the job at hand: immersion in the psychological reality of a pretend character. We admire the great actors of the movies -- Sir Alec Guinness, Meryl Streep, Edward Norton -- even if we never quite love them.

That's an emotion reserved for movie stars, those men and women who bend the cinematic frame to their personality instead of the other way around. Hollywood used to mint them like state quarters -- Hepburn, Bogart, Garbo, Davis, and on into the ranks of hopeful B-listers -- and they only got into trouble when cast against type. Of course Cary Grant always played himself: He knew how singular a creation he was on the big screen, just as our most popular current stars -- Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson, Julia Roberts -- know better than to mess with success.

If the stars get adoration but not always respect, and the actors earn critical plaudits and sometimes little else, a golden group of actor-stars does exist, delivering the best of both worlds and receiving both love and admiration in return. Anthony Hopkins lives on this rarefied plane, and so do Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. Susan Sarandon is a member, and Nicole Kidman may someday be; Sigourney Weaver and Jodie Foster would belong here if they'd only make more movies. They all have the fame every conscientious actor dreams of, and the reviews and awards for which any star would happily murder his or her agent.

Now to apply the theory to MattandBen. Since they lifted off the launching pad with their 1997 Oscar for best original screenplay, their careers have diverged: Affleck clearly wants to be a star, while Damon seems more intent on becoming an actor. In Affleck's case, that means taking roles in which he doesn't disappear into a character but, instead, plays to his public persona: the handsome, swaggering cad who finally gets his sensitivity lessons in the last reel. Falling into this category are films such as "Bounce," "Changing Lanes," and the current object of derision, "Gigli."

The problem is that Affleck's more believable as a heel than as a heartthrob, and the callowness he brings to his characters ends up seeming an unlikable aspect of the man himself. Then there are his other films. "The Sum of All Fears," "Pearl Harbor," and "Daredevil" are star vehicles for someone who hasn't yet earned the right to call himself a star, and his assuming of the mantle before he has had a couple of genuine popular hits only grates on the public nerve. All the blaring media hype in the world can't manufacture audience affection, but it can chase it away, as Affleck may be learning, to his bafflement.

Damon, on the other hand, has had a much less visible post-"Hunting" career. He's been in a blockbuster derived from a paperback bestseller, but "The Bourne Identity" had the luck to be a better movie than "The Sum of All Fears," and it wasn't rammed down our throats with similar public-relations ferocity. Damon has starred in duds ("All the Pretty Horses," "The Legend of Bagger Vance"), but the directors took the blame in both cases. He has appeared in the ensembles of "Ocean's Eleven" and "Saving Private Ryan" with what looks like self-effacing grace.

More to the point, it's impossible to imagine Affleck taking on the role of a gay, murderous social climber ("The Talented Mr. Ripley"), a wandering existential schlub ("Gerry"), or one half of a pair of conjoined twins (the Farrelly brothers' upcoming "Stuck On You"). Who knows what Damon is up to with such diversity? His appealingly mashed-in mug offers few clues. Perhaps he has a mercurial agent. Or maybe he's doing what any smart young actor would do: exploring the possibilities.

That may be the better route to real stardom, an actor's stardom. It's certainly the way to better movies. Are you taking notes, Ben?

Ty Burr can be reached at tburr@ globe.com.