Ben Affleck is looking back on his time making the 1998 blockbuster Armageddon.
The Rip actor revealed that he was suffering from food poisoning while filming the emotional scene where Bruce Willis’ Harry S. Stamper says goodbye to Affleck’s A.J. Frost, sacrificing himself to save the planet from an asteroid.
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“When we shot that scene, I had food poisoning,” Affleck said during a recent interview with Fox 32 Chicago’s Jake Hamilton. “I wasn’t an experienced enough actor at that point to know that you can just pick up the phone and be like, ‘I’m too sick to work today.’ I’m like, ‘I better come in.’ So I went and I was literally — it’s the only time it’s ever happened in my life — vomiting between takes.”
“They had a garbage can and I was [vomiting between takes]. And it probably made the scene better,” he added with a laugh.
Affleck shared that filming Armageddon allowed him to work with several talented actors, including Willis, who he said was “really nice to everybody.” Billy Bob Thornton, Steve Buscemi, Owen Wilson, Michael Clarke Duncan and Will Patton also appeared in the disaster film. Liv Tyler played Affleck’s love interest Grace Stamper, who is Harry’s daughter.
“I actually saw Steve Buscemi last night at the premiere for The Rip, and we were reminiscing about that movie and thinking about how that was the weirdest, kind of wonderful, strange, otherworldly movie experience,” Affleck said.
Armageddon director Michael Bay previously told The Hollywood Reporter that Affleck “felt like shit” while filming the movie’s iconic ending. The director shared that Affleck was suffering from the stomach flu, but was “great” in the scene regardless.
“That movie was such a blast. It was like a summer camp and I was the counselor,” Bay recalled in March. “Everyone was so misbehaved and so funny. I’ll tell you the truth. There was a three-gallon painting bucket next to Ben Affleck. He had the stomach flu. He felt like shit. He looked like shit, too. And he had to do that scene between him throwing up. We kept shooting him. And he’s great in that. And he’s great in that partially because he had the stomach flu.”
Armageddon isn’t the only Affleck film that the industry is looking back on. During an event at a Los Angeles bookstore on Thursday, Jennifer Garner recalled Affleck listening to Beyoncé’s 2008 single “Halo” non-stop while making the 2010 thriller The Town. The Alias actress, who was married to Affleck from 2005 to 2018, reflected on the moment while speaking about her Apple TV series, The Last Thing He Told Me, with author Laura Dave and co-star Rita Wilson, according to People.
Garner mentioned that Dave, who wrote the book the series is based on, listened to music while working, similar to Affleck.
“Do you guys do this? Do you listen to a song over and over again? … I just want to tell you something. I’ve survived this. I have lived through it,” Garner said at Diesel, A Bookstore. “Ben Affleck listens to a song over and over. I had a 3-month-old and a 3-year-old living in a rental in Cambridge, Massachusetts while he was shooting The Town. And he listened to Beyoncé’s ‘Halo,’ and I would be nursing.”
Dave responded, ”I love that because the only other person now besides Ben that I’ve heard that does that was [screenwriter] Tom Stoppard. And when I heard that, I thought, okay, I’m in some good company.”
Affleck previously opened up about listening to music while working during an interview with the Golden Globes’ website in 2016. The Oscar winner said that he likes to find songs that inspire him and “write to music.”
”I find that it’s kind of hypnotic and it allows me to concentrate more and it puts me more in the kind of feeling of the scene that I want the story to have,” he shared. ”And so I think music is really, really helpful.”
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