Ben Affleck approached his role in the movie The Way Back otherwise by his own experience with alcoholism. In conversation with Sacha Baron Cohen, the American actor tells Variety that he played a scene where he got drunk differently than colleagues who have not been addicted would have done.
In the conversation, Baron Cohen refers to a scene where Affleck’s character – a basketball coach who is addicted to alcohol – drinks all the beer in the fridge and asks him if he actually drank that day on set.
Affleck replies that he didn’t drink a drop to play the scene, but did use his own experience with addiction. “An actor who himself has no experience with addiction or alcoholism would like to portray it big,” said the actor. “But I noticed, especially at the end of the period that I was drinking, that I was turning into myself and isolating myself.”
“It’s actually the opposite of the crazy and wild drunkenness you often see played out. My character just withdrew and returned to himself.”
‘It’s hard to watch’
Affleck says that viewers of the film first had to laugh at the alcohol consumption during a screening, but that it soon became quiet. “You could feel the discomfort. It’s hard to watch.”
The actor says he regularly felt drunk while he was sober. “I remembered how it felt then.”
Affleck has received treatment for his addiction several times in rehab. The actor had a relapse in 2018, but says he has been sober for quite some time now.
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