Ben Affleck on Hollywoodland

The Oscar winner on playing the most famous small screen Superman and coming to terms with press intrusion

Fame in Hollywood can be a very untrustworthy thing. It's a place where the journey from 'Next Big Thing' to 'Whatever Happened To' can be terrifyingly short, and where having a massive public profile can be just as much a curse as a blessing. One person who doesn't need reminding of this is Ben Affleck, an actor who's gone from winning a Best Screenplay Oscar with Matt Damon for Good Will Hunting in 1999, to an over-publicised affair with Jennifer Lopez that turned him into prime tabloid fodder, and a string of high-profile critical and financial flops including Gigli, Surviving Christmas and Kevin Smith's Jersey Girl.

Affleck's latest film looks likely to halt his career slide, giving him a very different chance to show his talents in a role that parallels his own career. Hollywoodland is a 1950s-set drama that explores the events behind the death of actor George Reeves, the man who became one of TV's first major stars by playing the lead role in 'The Adventures Of Superman', but who found himself unable to escape the trap of typecasting. While one of the film's plotlines follows Adrien Brody as a private eye investigating Reeves' death in the wake of his apparent suicide, the other tracks Affleck as Reeves falling from fame to infamy. It's a hugely impressive performance in a role the actor counted himself lucky to get.

Absolutely," says Affleck. "I chased this part, and knew it would be a real coup for me to get it. It's a very rich role, and there was a lot to play - he was a very generous, gregarious, outgoing guy who became this icon of masculinity and 1950s American virility, and yet beneath that was this really tragic, sad soul. Plus, playing a supporting part meant I didn't have to do as much. When you're the protagonist, you get a lot of running around telling the story, whereas in something like this, you get the chance to explore some of the nuance and the more complicated aspects of the character."

Playing the actor behind one of the best-known screen incarnations of Superman also meant having to wear the famous costume, for which Affleck could draw on his own experiences of playing a superhero. "Reeves loathed wearing the Superman suit, and it wasn't hard to sympathise - when I was making Daredevil, I was dressed in this red leather thing, a mask I couldn't see through and a costume that completely inhibited my movement, and essentially I'd spend whole days wearing this, feeling like a complete fool."

"The thing is, for him, it was also a constant reminder of his own thwarted ambitions and how he hadn't achieved being a serious actor- in fact quite the opposite, he'd become a silly actor. It was a source of continuous humiliation for him, and as the series went on and he got more control, the amount of Superman in each episode was diminished. We just tried to find ways of showing how the costume became such a burden to him, both when he was working, and in his normal life."

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