Ben Affleck and Matt Damon have shared decades of friendship, blockbuster success, and Hollywood history. But long before Oscars and red carpets, the two best friends had a moment that nearly ended much worse than it began. During a recent TV appearance, Affleck and Damon looked back on the biggest fight they had ever had, one that started as harmless fun and ended with a trip to the hospital.
Ben Affleck and Matt Damon talk about brawl on the School Ties set
The story dates back to 1992, when Ben Affleck and Matt Damon were still in their teens, filming the movie School Ties. While chatting on The Tonight Show, Affleck called it the “biggest fight” they had.
Damon said it all started during some downtime on set. With nothing to do, the young cast, including Brendan Fraser, Cole Hauser, and Chris O’Donnell, started messing around. They threw acorns at each other. Back then, it felt like harmless fun. As Damon put it, “We were 19, 20 years old, and there were a bunch of us.”
That’s when things went sideways. Affleck tossed an acorn in Hauser’s direction. Hauser dodged it, Damon turned his head, and the acorn hit Damon straight in the eye. “I didn’t have time to blink,” Damon said later. The impact was bad enough that he had to be taken to the hospital.
While Damon was worrying about whether his eyesight would be okay, Affleck was spiraling over something else entirely. At the time, Affleck had barely any lines in the movie and thought his career was over before it even began. “Mind you, I had like three lines in the movie. And while I cared about Matt having vision, my first thought was, I gotta be fired for this,“ Affleck said.
The injury meant Damon had to wear an eyepatch on set for a few days. Funny enough, the movie’s first assistant director, Newt Arnold, was also wearing one at the same time. Damon later laughed about how bizarre it looked, saying they even snapped photos together.
Originally reported by Rishabh Shandilya for ComingSoon.
