They’ve acted together, written movies together, and won Oscars together. But before they hit it big, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck were roommates. The two childhood friends ended up living together as they tried to get their big breaks in Hollywood. And although their story of friendship is an epic one, Affleck didn’t exactly have the best experience while they lived together.
During an appearance on the April 13 episode of The Late Late Show, Affleck said that Damon was a terrible roommate, who was so messy that at one point maggots appeared in their house. Affleck himself had stopped cleaning to see if Damon would notice—which he didn’t.
Read on for more of the dirty details about the famous former roommate.
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During the interview, host James Corden asked Affleck if Damon was a good or bad roommate.
“Matt’s a beautiful guy. I love him. He’s my best friend. He’s been great to me my whole life. He’s a brilliant guy,” Affleck responded. “I would not suggest living with him.”
He explained that Damon can very easily overlook things.
“He has an ability—you know people that block things out? I think that’s why he’s such a great actor, because he can just focus,” Affleck said. “One of the things he blocks out is that when you finish with something, it has to be washed or thrown away.”
Affleck and Damon’s third roommate in their Los Angeles home was Affleck’s younger brother, Casey Affleck. The brothers decided at one point to stop cleaning to see if Damon would notice.
“We’re just gonna wait and see how long he will go before he actually gets up and goes, ‘God, I’m covered in garbage!'” Affleck said on the talk show. “We went two weeks without touching the apartment.”
One day, they showed up at home to see Damon sitting in the living room surrounded by garbage while playing a video game.
“I look down at this sushi thing that’s like a week-and-a-half old and there’s maggots,” the Gone Girl actor said. “We were like, ‘We submit. You are too good. We cannot beat you.'”
Affleck added, “God bless his wife, Lucy [Barroso]. There’s a place for you in heaven.”
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Damon and Affleck being roommates isn’t the only indication of how close their relationship has always been—they also had a joint bank account when they were teenagers.
“Why do people think that’s unusual?” Affleck joked on The Late Late Show.
He explained, “We were teenagers and we lived in Boston, we wanted to go up to New York and audition. We wanted to help each other. One of us would make enough money, so that we could keep having enough to take the train to New York to do the next audition. And then when we moved to LA, we lived in the same house and it was just easier.”
Obviously, Affleck and Damon no longer live together today, or need to share money, but they’re still close friends and have kept working together.
They appeared together in some movies during their early careers (1989’s Field of Dreams and 1992’s School Ties), and won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1998 for Good Will Hunting.
More recently, the two co-starred in the 2021 movie The Last Duel, which they also co-wrote with Nicole Holofcener. And they star in the new film Air, also directed by Affleck, which is now in theateres.
In 2022, Damon interviewed Affleck for Entertainment Weekly, and Affleck shared just how much their friendship has meant.
“I don’t know that that would’ve been possible for me alone, doing this job in this world without somebody I grew up with who I loved, who I knew loved me and had my back, who believed in me, and whom the popularity of my movies or what people said about me wasn’t going to change what they thought about me,” he said.
Affleck added, “This friendship has been essential and defining and so important to me in my life. There were a few critical times, which are private and I don’t want to share, but where your support was so profoundly meaningful to me that I don’t think I would’ve been able to be successful without it.”