Ben Affleck and Matt Damon Once Shared a Bank Account for Auditions: 'We Needed the Money'

Matt Damon and Ben Affleck once had a shared bank account to help each other kick-start their careers.

In a recent episode of The Bill Simmons Podcast, the Oscar winners explained that they shared a single bank account starting in the late 1980s.

"It was unusual, but we needed the money for auditions," Damon, 50, said of sharing his money with his former roommate, calling it "a weird thing in retrospect."

However, he noted, "As long as one of us had money, we knew that the power wasn't going to get shut off."

"I remember after doing Geronimo, I was like, f---, I probably had like 35 grand in the bank. I was like [to Affleck], 'We're good! We're good for a year!' " added Damon.

The two also had their own rules about spending cash outside of necessary career pursuits. "You were allowed to take out $10 and get quarters and go to [the arcade] and play video games," Damon recalled. "Eventually we were allowed to try to buy beer, which never f---ing worked."

"I think that attitude really helped us in ways we couldn't anticipate," Affleck said. "Matt and I always felt like we're in it together. Like, 'Hey, I want to get the part, but I want you to get the part [too]."

Affleck and Damon met while growing up in Boston and graduated from the same high school.

The pair started auditioning together and eventually appeared in their first movie, School Ties, in 1992. They went on to star in several more films together, including 1997's Good Will Hunting, for which they won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.

More recently, they starred together in The Last Duel (2021), a historical action-drama film directed by Ridley Scott and costarring Adam Driver and Jodie Comer. They both star in the new film AIR, which is also directed by Affleck. It's the first film from their new production company Artists Equity, and it's in theaters April 5.