Ethan Hawke has spent decades watching Matt Damon and Ben Affleck build their careers in Hollywood. But what impresses him most today isn't their Oscar wins or box-office success. It's the friendship they've managed to preserve through more than four decades of fame, competition and change.
Speaking to John Feitelberg on the October 19, 2026 episode of Scene Stealers, Hawke praised the actors' enduring relationship, describing it as a positive example of male friendship. As BuzzFeed reported, he said watching their friendship evolve had become a source of inspiration.
What makes his admiration particularly interesting is that Hawke didn't always view the pair's success so comfortably. Earlier in his career, he sometimes measured his own progress against theirs, interpreting another actor's achievements as a reflection of what he hadn't accomplished.
There was a particular irony to that comparison. Hawke earned his breakthrough role in 1989's Dead Poets Society, a film for which Damon and Affleck had also auditioned unsuccessfully. Yet when the two friends achieved international recognition with 1997's Good Will Hunting, Hawke found himself envying aspects of their journey.
As he explained in the same interview, he believed Damon and Affleck had benefited from entering the spotlight later, having developed a clearer understanding of themselves as performers. Hawke, by contrast, felt he had been learning those lessons while already working in the public eye.
What Damon and Affleck have said about their friendship
The relationship Hawke now admires was firmly established long before either actor became famous. In a December 1997 interview with Interview magazine, conducted around the release of Good Will Hunting, Affleck explained that genuine friendship required honesty, including the willingness to confront uncomfortable subjects rather than pretend everything was fine.
Nearly three decades later, their approach to working together offers another insight into that bond.
In a January 2026 interview with Parade, Damon acknowledged that the two had spent a lengthy period avoiding collaborations, partly because they wanted to establish themselves as individual actors rather than remain identified as a professional duo.
Eventually, they questioned why they weren't making more films together. Their renewed collaboration included founding production company Artists Equity in 2022, following their Oscar-winning work on Good Will Hunting and later projects such as The Last Duel. They also reunited on screen in 2023's Air and the 2026 Netflix thriller The Rip.
Damon made an important distinction when discussing their history with Parade: their ambitions in Hollywood grew out of an existing childhood friendship, rather than their professional partnership creating the relationship.
That history provides a revealing counterpoint to Hawke's reflections. The actor who once worried about being overtaken by his contemporaries now recognises something their careers demonstrate: professional success and personal loyalty need not compete with each other.
Hawke's comments are not a suggestion that Damon and Affleck have enjoyed a disagreement-free relationship. Their own interviews describe years of individual career choices, changing priorities and occasional friction. What he finds admirable is that the friendship has continued through those changes, remaining part of their lives even when their professional paths diverged.
