Ben Affleck has said that, despite his current status as a Hollywood powerhouse, he once had to tell a white lie to land an acting role.
One of Ben’s early jobs was in a Burger King commercial when he was an adolescent, before he appeared in Good Will Hunting, Pearl Harbour, and Gone Girl.
He has now admitted that the 1989 project was almost a complete failure.
On Friday, when making an appearance on The Drew Barrymore Show, the audience was treated to a repeat of the commercial, which was created when he was only 17 years old.
Ben, 50, cracked a joke as the audience cheered, saying, “I would have been much more optimistic about my career if I knew the commercial would get that response.”
‘I don’t remember (a) similar enthusiasm at the time. My director almost fired me and now I can see why,’ he explained on the talk show.
In the advertisement, a young woman dials Ben’s character’s vehicle number while trying to place an order at Burger King.
He drives to the fast food joint, plays along, orders what she requested, and then leaves it on her doorstep.
But before they can meet, his father phones the car phone, and he has to go back to the vehicle to answer it.
‘There was a car in the commercial and I had to drive,’ Ben continued his story.
‘They’re always worried about actors driving.’
It turns out that the director lied a tiny bit when he asked Ben if he could drive.
‘Yeah, yeah, I know how to drive,’ he answered, to which the director responded, ‘Are you sure?’
‘Guys, I’ve driven like 500 or 1,000 miles,’ Ben recalled saying at the time.
Ben claimed it required numerous tries but he managed to avoid striking any people or props while making a few wide curves for the advertisement.
‘I also remember being like, “I don’t know why this director keeps making me do it over and over again”,’ he said.
‘And now looking at the performance, I have a better idea.’
Years later, Ben was once more chosen to appear in a fast-food ad, this time for Dunkin’ Donuts during the Super Bowl.
In it, he plays a worker at the drive-through and shortly runs across his wife Jennifer Lopez’s character, a client.
The Drew Barrymore Show airs on CBS in the US.