'Before Matt, I was by myself.' The 40-year-long friendship of Ben Affleck and Matt Damon.

Before the fame and accolades, it was just Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and a friendship. 

The actors met when their parents introduced them as kids in the early 1980s. They lived just two blocks away and went to school together.

In a 2007 interview with Parade, Affleck said they initially bonded over their love of acting. 

"As a teenager, the natural thing is to have friends who have common interests and so you fit together seamlessly," he said. 

"Before Matt, I was by myself. Acting was a solo activity where I’d just goof off and do something, act in a little TV show or something, and no one understood it. None of the other kids knew what it was I did, how it worked, or anything. 

"All of a sudden I had this friend, Matt, and he gets it and wants to do it and thinks it’s interesting and wants to talk about it. Soon both of us are doing it."

Watch: Celebs who schooled together. Post continues after video. 

While Affleck began acting as a child when his mother's friend — a casting director — hired him, Damon's mother thought it was "child abuse" to put a child on the stage or in front of a camera. 

"My mother thought it was child abuse. She literally did," he told Esquire.

"She was a professor who specialised in early childhood development, and she thought putting a child onstage or in a commercial or in a movie was child abuse."

Still, the pair pursued acting jobs together. 

In high school, they would travel to New York from their hometown of Cambridge, Massachusetts for auditions.

Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, 1997. Image: Getty.

"We'd take the train. Or sometimes we'd even take the aeroplane, back when there was the Eastern Shuttle or People's Express," Affleck told Parade. 

"It cost like $20 to fly and you could smoke on the plane. We were smoking like idiots because we thought we were really supposed to be grown-up. It was pitiful."

Their first roles were in 1992's School Ties. Damon had a lead role alongside Brendan Fraser and Affleck played a supporting part. 

They played alongside each other again three years later in Glory Daze, where Affleck had the starring role and Damon appeared in a minor role. 

Ben Affleck in Glory Daze. Image: Sony Pictures.

Eventually, they both found success; but the early days were hard. 

The friends shared a bank account to ensure whoever was landing roles would keep them afloat.

"As long as one of us had money, we knew the power wasn't going to get shut off," Damon told The Bill Simmons Podcast

At one point, Damon had about $35,000 USD sitting in the account after scoring a minor role in the 1993 film Geronimo. The pair used most of it to fund trips to New York for auditions. 

Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, 1998. Image: Getty.

"You were allowed to go to New York with the money," Damon said. 

"You were allowed to take out $10 and get quarters and go to the arcade and play video games. Eventually, we were allowed to try to buy beer, which never f**king worked."

While studying acting at Harvard University in the '90s, Damon began writing the bones of Good Will Hunting, where a self-taught maths whiz works at MIT.

After being turned down for the film Primal Fear, he became determined to turn his screenplay into a film. 

He enlisted the help of his lifelong friend, Affleck, and they continued to finish the script. 

"People would always say, 'Well who wrote more of the screenplay?' or 'What did you write and what did he write?' and I'd go, 'It's just half.' I can't remember the genesis of every line, because we both wrote every line," Damon said during an interview on Off Camera With Same Jones.

Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. Image: Getty.

At the 1998 Oscars, Good Will Hunting earned nine nominations and won two: Best Supporting Actor for Robin Williams and Best Original Screenplay for Affleck and Damon.

The film was also a box office smash, earning over $200 million USD.

It launched the careers of the two actors. 

"Actors end up making really safe choices. I never wanted to go that route. If I’m going to go down, I’m going to go down swinging," Damon said. 

Matt Damon, Robin Williams and Ben Affleck at the Oscars. Image: Getty.

As their success grew, Damon and Affleck's relationship became highly publicised in the media, so much so that reports claimed the pair were gay. 

In 2012, Damon addressed the rumours with a cutting response. 

"I never denied those rumours because I was offended and didn't want to offend my friends who were gay — as if being gay were some kind of f**king disease," he told Playboy. 

"It put me in a weird position in that sense. The whole thing was just gross."

The pair's most recent work together was in the 2022 film Air, about the partnership between NBA star Michael Jordan and Nike. 

They continue to take every opportunity to be together when they can — especially after the loss of Damon's father Kent in 2017, who both actors were "very, very close with". 

"It's like it changed something in us. I think and you know, you start to really...you start to see the end game and you start to feel like I want to make every second count," Damon said on Who's Talking to Chris Wallace. 

"I don't want to fritter away time anymore."

Feature Image: Getty.