Tigers#1
11-20-2002, 12:17 PM
He was buff. He was bad. He was dressed head to toe in tight red leather. And he hardly broke a sweat dangling from a ledge 10 stories above downtown L.A. without a safety net. No wonder Ben Affleck attracted crowds of adoring females when he did his own stunt work for his upcoming action film Daredevil. "We all swooned," says his costar Jennifer Garner. "He's your basic tall, dark and handsome. He's it. You want him to save you. I can't imagine anyone the world would rather see swoop in and save the day than Ben."
Being a superhero takes more than good looks--and the same goes for being crowned this year's Sexiest Man Alive. "Ben's really loyal and really honest, really smart, really funny," says Matt Damon, Affleck's best buddy since boyhood. "He's got more going for him than just about anyone I've ever met."
The 30-year-old actor is also intriguingly complex. In private that big-screen big lunk (he's 6'2") displays impressive range: An easygoing charmer. A passionate political activist. An Oscar winner. A devoted son. A self-aware grown-up. A flirt. A brainiac. A goofball. A head-over-heels romantic.
And -- perhaps you've heard -- husband-to-be to a certain Jennifer Lopez. Despite the hullabaloo over the joined-at-the-lips stars' flashy four-month courtship -- and much public clucking over Lopez's short-lived pair of previous marriages -- those close to Affleck applaud the engagement. "They understand each other," says his mother, Chris, 59, a Cambridge, Mass., fifth- and sixth-grade teacher. "She's just a lovely person. She's very connected to her family. She's very warm. She's like the ideal daughter-in-law. The only downside is that she is so famous, but on the other hand, so is Ben, and who's going to put up with that if they're not in that same world?"
Meanwhile Affleck's move into the world of commitment marks an important milestone for the never-wed star, who stepped out with the likes of Shoshanna Lonstein and Famke Janssen following the 1999 breakup of his intense romance with Gwyneth Paltrow. "Recently he has matured a lot," says his mother. "It's no longer 'I'm in love, but I'm young,' it's 'I want to make a life now, I'm ready for this.'"
Before Lopez came on the scene, recalls Daredevil director Mark Steven Johnson, "I used to joke with him about how he was going to be in his 50s hitting on 18-year-old girls. He laughed and said, 'No, I won't.'" As Affleck himself told Good Morning America in April, "What's going to mean the most to me (is) being a father, being a husband, being a person of whom I can really be proud."
Being a superhero takes more than good looks--and the same goes for being crowned this year's Sexiest Man Alive. "Ben's really loyal and really honest, really smart, really funny," says Matt Damon, Affleck's best buddy since boyhood. "He's got more going for him than just about anyone I've ever met."
The 30-year-old actor is also intriguingly complex. In private that big-screen big lunk (he's 6'2") displays impressive range: An easygoing charmer. A passionate political activist. An Oscar winner. A devoted son. A self-aware grown-up. A flirt. A brainiac. A goofball. A head-over-heels romantic.
And -- perhaps you've heard -- husband-to-be to a certain Jennifer Lopez. Despite the hullabaloo over the joined-at-the-lips stars' flashy four-month courtship -- and much public clucking over Lopez's short-lived pair of previous marriages -- those close to Affleck applaud the engagement. "They understand each other," says his mother, Chris, 59, a Cambridge, Mass., fifth- and sixth-grade teacher. "She's just a lovely person. She's very connected to her family. She's very warm. She's like the ideal daughter-in-law. The only downside is that she is so famous, but on the other hand, so is Ben, and who's going to put up with that if they're not in that same world?"
Meanwhile Affleck's move into the world of commitment marks an important milestone for the never-wed star, who stepped out with the likes of Shoshanna Lonstein and Famke Janssen following the 1999 breakup of his intense romance with Gwyneth Paltrow. "Recently he has matured a lot," says his mother. "It's no longer 'I'm in love, but I'm young,' it's 'I want to make a life now, I'm ready for this.'"
Before Lopez came on the scene, recalls Daredevil director Mark Steven Johnson, "I used to joke with him about how he was going to be in his 50s hitting on 18-year-old girls. He laughed and said, 'No, I won't.'" As Affleck himself told Good Morning America in April, "What's going to mean the most to me (is) being a father, being a husband, being a person of whom I can really be proud."