Ben Affleck hasn’t always been a movie star. In fact one of his first roles – a one-line cameo in Buffy the Vampire Slayer – was so bad that it had to be dubbed over in the final cut.
Affleck played an unnamed basketball player in 1992’s Buffy movie (not to be confused with the long-running TV series starring Sarah Michelle Gellar). In one scene, he encounters a werewolf masquerading as an opponent while holding the ball during a game. His – dubbed – reply? "Take it, man."
"I went and saw the movie with some friends," Affleck said on The Late Late Show with James Corden. "I sounded very different. I realized right then that they re-recorded my lines. I was so bad… that the director was obviously like, ‘I can’t hear the voice again!’"
He continued, "They had to pay someone to come in and say [Take it, man], because apparently I couldn’t say that convincingly enough."
Even if his walk-on part wasn’t a slam dunk, Affleck’s career took off from there. He achieved wider success for his turn in 1997’s Good Will Hunting before segueing into blockbuster dramas with Armageddon and Pearl Harbor.
Affleck’s most recent movie, Air, has given the actor the best Rotten Tomatoes score of his career, while he’s all set to reprise his role as Batman in The Flash – though a cameo scene with Wonder Woman won’t make the cut.
Affleck, meanwhile, is not alone with his odd Buffy-shaped history. As Sarah Michelle Gellar was all too keen to point out, The Mandalorian actor Pedro Pascal looks almost unrecognizable in his small part in the fourth season of the supernatural series.
For more on what’s coming out this year, check out our guide to 2023’s movie release dates.
