Matt Damon Says 'It Was Painful' Being Ben Affleck's Friend When He Was Dating Jennifer Lopez

Ben Affleck's best friend Matt Damon looked back on the star's relationship with JLo and how it led to what he considers a misunderstanding about the talent of the actor. "There's nobody who's more misunderstood. Ten years ago, the public image of him could not have been farther apart from who he actually is. It was like he was being cast in a role, that he was a talentless kind of meathead, with his whole relationship with Jennifer Lopez. He just got cast as this person that he wasn't. It was just really painful. It was painful to be his friend, because it wasn't fair, you know? To my mind, nobody really got him at all. And through his work, he climbed from the bottom of the mountain all the way back up to the top and past where either of us had ever been," Matt said.

"Bennifer" met on the set of the critically-panned movie Gigli, they got together in 2002, but called quits in January 2004 after their engagement. After their break-up, Affleck eventually married Jennifer Garner in 2005, while Lopez got together with her now-ex-husband and singer Marc Anthony.