The Gist
Matt Damon and Ben Affleck were childhood friends in Cambridge, Massachusetts, eventually going on to make the 1997 hit Good Will Hunting.
When watching the movie, Matt’s wife Luciana later told him that she originally thought Affleck “was the cute one,” not him.
The two men—who star together in the new film The Rip—opened up about their friendship on the January 12 episode of The Howard Stern Show.
Matt Damon met and fell in love with future wife Luciana in 2003—six years after Matt and his childhood friend Ben Affleck hit the big time with their 1997 film Good Will Hunting. As Matt shared in a new interview, after his future wife saw the movie in theaters, she thought Affleck “was the cute one” of the two—and not him.
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Matt Damon and Luciana Damon on May 6, 2024
Speaking on the January 12 episode of The Howard Stern Show alongside Affleck, Matt—after being asked by Stern if Affleck was there the night he met Luciana—said, “After we’d been together for a little while, probably a few months, she admitted that—I think I met her best friend from high school and it came out that the two of them went and saw Good Will Hunting together and her best friend thought I was the cute one, and she thought Ben was the cute one.”
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Matt Damon and Ben Affleck on January 12, 2026
“I’m like, ‘You got the wrong one?’” Matt said. “She told me that 23 years ago.” Of Luciana—who Matt married in 2005 and shares four daughters with and who is also a producer on Matt and Affleck’s new movie The Rip—Affleck added, “She’s a great producer and a really good friend and yeah, I never got that vibe from her. So I think something I did in real life rubbed it off.”
“Finally she met him and all that went away,” Matt joked of Luciana’s crush.
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Ben Affleck and Matt Damon at SXSW on March 18, 2023
Of the night they met, Matt said of his wife, “I couldn’t remember who I was with, ‘cause all I remembered was her.” To this, Affleck playfully added, “He knows why he’s a good husband because he’s like, ‘All I can see was her,’ and I’m like, ‘But also, you were hammered, and it’s a little vague.’ But he’s smart enough not to say that.”
Getting serious, Affleck continued, “It’s a really gorgeous marriage and friendship and two people who, when they’re apart and independent of one another, are one another’s partner.”
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Luciana Damon and Matt Damon on September 4, 2024
Of meeting Matt nearly 23 years ago, Luciana previously told Vogue Australia, “When you meet somebody that you have a connection with, that’s just the person that you have a connection with. All the other stuff—the movie star part—wasn’t really a factor. It was just Matt. To me, he’s just Matt.”
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Ben Affleck and Matt Damon at the Golden Globes on January 7, 2023
Of their long friendship—which has included seeing Affleck through addiction and two divorces, from Jennifer Garner in 2018 and Jennifer Lopez in 2025—Matt told Stern, “Our relationship isn’t affected by what people are saying. I was there for all of it.” To this, Affleck replied, “That means a lot to me. That’s sort of what a real friend is.”
Read the original article on InStyle