How Matt Damon helped Ben Affleck through troubling divorces, alcohol addiction

Matt Damon said he never stopped being there for Ben Affleck during the latter’s very public struggles in his personal life.

The best friends made an appearance on Sirius XM’s “The Howard Stern Show” on Monday, when Affleck candidly discussed a period of his time when he was “drinking too much.”

Stern also brought up Affleck going through divorces, and asked Damon, “Could you go to Ben and say, ‘I’m here to help you?’”

Damon responded, “Oh, yeah, our relationship isn’t affected by what people are saying.”

“I was there for all of it,” he added.

Affleck reflected on Damon’s support.

“That means a lot to me,” he said. “That’s sort of what a real friend is.”

Damon, 55, and Affleck, 53, are famously childhood friends who grew up in Boston together. Stern stressed that their close friendship is actually “a great romance” and “real love.”

“It’s definitely love,” Affleck said of his feelings towards his best friend, noting that that was what their Oscar-winning movie, “Good Will Hunting,” is about.

“Especially as a young guy, the really intense love relationships you have with other young men who you’re really loyal to and really close to and who you grew up with, and a lot of times those relationships are lifelong,” he said.

“I think as young men at least, we were much more … we understood better how important these pure friendships were, and what they meant to us and how they kind of define your identity as early as high school,” he continued.

Damon also said of their careers in Hollywood, “We hit the lottery. We hit it together.”

Affleck credited his friendship with Damon as how they have both managed to stay “sane.”

“Getting famous and successful kind of together, [we had] somebody to turn to and go ‘Is this f–king nuts, or what?’” he explained. “Or to say, ‘What are you doing, man?’”

Damon previously expressed sympathy for Affleck, noting he couldn’t imagine “living under that type of scrutiny” during his appearance on “Radio Times Podcast” in August 2024.

Affleck has gone through two very public divorces, first with Jennifer Garner in 2015 and then with Jennifer Lopez in 2025.

Damon said, “And it’s been like that for 25 years and we’ve had parallel careers in a lot of ways and so I’m fortunate to have been kind of excused from that part of [fame].”

Damon has been married to his wife, Luciana Bozán, since 2005.