Ben Affleck, the Oscar-winning actor, became the famed jack of all trades after he wrote and starred in the 1997 film, ‘Good Will Hunting,’ alongside his pal Matt Damon. However, the inspiration behind the film is his father, Timothy Byers Affleck.
In an interview with GQ Magazine, Ben revealed that after being turned down for the lead roles, he and Damon decided to write and star in the film themselves, which later became one of the critically acclaimed and Oscar-winning films.
The inspiration behind the screen
“My father had that job at Harvard… He was a janitor, I think at the time, I like a lot of young people, and maybe even older people, really wanted to have my dad to be a hero. And I think I took some of that and into that sort of idea, but we really… faked it. When we had to have elaborate, sophisticated mathematical solutions, we had to call on people who could do that,” the actor stated, revealing the inspiration to make the film.
“We heard that on Star Trek when they were going to write their sci-fi stuff, the writers would just say ‘tech, tech tech’. So we did it. And then people were like, ‘I’m sorry, what is the tech?’ We’re like, ‘Oh, we thought that was a thing. ’ That’s how you do it in the show business. And they were like, ‘No one does that. ’ We had mathematicians at MIT who, by the way, could have been making it up,” he further added.
About ‘Good Will Hunting’
‘Good Will Hunting’ is the story about a janitor from MIT, Will Hunting (Matt Damon), who is a mathematical genius, and is led to brilliance by his mentor, Sean Maguire (Robin Williams). The film won the Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild Award, Critics’ Choice Movie Award, Academy Award and many more.
