BEN'S WAY BACK

The troubled star confronted all his demons in his harrowing new movie role

- JANE VORSTER

A MOVIE about a washed-up alcoholic whose addiction has cost him his marriage and just about everything else that’s important to him. Surely that’s a project someone like Ben Affleck, who’s been in and out of rehab, should avoid like the plague.

The jury is still out about whether the actor’s harrowing performance in The Way Back is the bravest thing he’s ever done or the craziest.

Even director Gavin O’Connor admits he had serious reservations about casting Ben in the role of Jack Cunningham, a construction worker who tries to drink away his sorrows after a devastating personal loss.

It all just seemed way too close to the bone – especially when just months before filming was due to begin, news broke that Ben (47) was back in rehab for a third time.

Apparently his drinking was so out of hand that his ex-wife, Jennifer Garner (47), intervened and insisted he get help.

“So now we were prepping the movie while he was in rehab and we thought it was going to fall apart,” Gavin says.

He didn’t know whether to feel despair or relief when after a 40-day stint in rehab Ben showed up, ready to play Jack, a hard-drinking construction worker who gets thrown a life-line when he’s invited to coach basketball at his old high school.

“When he got out, he was incredibly vulnerable and I think a little lost,” Gavin says.

But he channelled all of this emotion into his performance. In one poignant scene in which Jack apologises to his ex-wife for having failed her as a husband it all came spilling out.

“Ben just had a breakdown. I’m getting chills thinking about it,” Gavin says. “It was like the dam broke.

“I just remember the crew, everyone was frozen, watching him bare his soul.

It was obviously real.”