MOVIES - Ben Affleck's roller coaster takes a new turn

"What really sets them apart," he says, "is that they don't seem to need to please other people." That last observation is accompanied by a rueful smile, since Affleck is self-aware enough to know that trying to please people has played a large role in his own fall from grace, a fall hastened by the poisonous tabloid exploitation of his brief engagement to Jennifer Lopez. Over the last decade, he's boxed the compass, going from baby-faced Sundance sensation ("Chasing Amy") to Oscar-winning screenwriter ("Good Will Hunting") to Michael Bay-blockbuster movie star ("Pearl Harbor") to "Bennifer"-era-tabloid subject of derision ("Gigli"). After several box-office duds, his last film, "Man About Town," never got a theatrical release.

You know times are hard when the Onion runs a photo of a forlorn Affleck with the headline: "Ben Affleck Hoping Jason Bourne Has Sidekick in Next Movie." A passionate baseball fan, Affleck offers a refreshingly blunt assessment of how Hollywood views his acting career at the moment: "You don't get four strikes."

Affleck can wax eloquent about fighting AIDS in Africa, analyze the insidious nature of using what many consider torture in the war on terror and quote the Latin motto of the Carthusian Order -- Stat crux dum volvitur orbis ("The cross is steady while the world is turning") -- but no matter how much you are impressed by his thoughtful demeanor, it's hard to avoid the obvious question: How did someone so smart end up in so many dumb movies? At 35, Affleck is still unwrinkled and boyishly handsome, but the scars from his career choices and tabloid tormentors aren't far from the surface.

Even just last week he found himself being quoted in the tabloids -- falsely he says -- complaining that Lopez had "hurt his career." Affleck, who is now married to actress Jennifer Garner, argues that "surely there are other things more important in the world, such as poverty in America, the fact that New Orleans hasn't been rebuilt, my movie, the Red Sox getting back to the World Series." As for the quote in question, it "not only makes me look like a petulant fool, but it surely qualifies as ungentlemanly. For the record, did she hurt my career? No."