He agreed to get naked in Gone Girl, but there was one thing Ben Affleck simply refused to do in the movie: Wear a New York Yankees baseball cap.
The film was released on Friday, and the 42-year-old Oscar winner and diehard fan of arch rival team the Boston Red Sox plays Nick Dunne, who becomes a murder suspect after his wife Amy, played by Rosamund Pike, disappears. The couple meets in New York City.
Affleck, who grew up in Massachusetts, told The New York Times he and director David Fincher had a "legitimate fight" over having him wear a Yankees cap for a scene in which Nick tries to avoid being recognized.
"I said, 'David, I love you, I would do anything for you,'" the actor told the newspaper. "'But I will not wear a Yankees hat. I just can't. I can't wear it because it's going to become a thing, David. I will never hear the end of it. I can't do it.' And I couldn't put it on my head."
"It was an uprising; it was a coup, I rioted," Affleck added. "It was a one-man riot against the Yankees."
Affleck has often been spotted at Red Sox games. He even got to throw the first pitch in Boston's Fenway Park before a Red Sox-Seattle Mariners game in 2003.
He's brought wife Jennifer Garner with him to games several times as well.
After the New York Times piece was published on Thursday, Red Sox expressed their appreciation for his "one-man riot against the Yankees."
@BenAffleck Thanks for not wearing a Yankees hat in #GoneGirl, Ben!
? Boston Red Sox (@RedSox) October 2, 2014And Affleck is not only a Yankees hater, he's a vocal Yankees hater. Here he is at a game in Fenway Park in 2004, heckling Jose Contreras, then a pitcher for the New York team.
While appearing on MTV's TRL in 2004, the year the Boston Red Sox won the World Series for the first time since 1918, Affleck was asked to answer trivia questions about the film he was promoting at that time, Jersey Girl, and was forced to don the Yankees jersey because he got one wrong.
"It's like The Exorcist! It's like, it's burning me, it's searing me!" he yelled as he wore it.
He threw it on the ground, stomped on it and put on a Red Sox jersey.
The team has won the World Series a total of seven times, most recently in 2013. The Yankees have won 27 times—the most for any MLB team.
In the end, Affleck and Fincher reached a compromise for Gone Girl: The actor ended up wearing a New York Mets cap in the movie.
"This was very Switzerland," Affleck told The New York Times.
Mr. Met is not impressed.
The Mets team, which is newer and less popular than the Yankees, has won the World Series twice, most recently in 1986. They beat the Red Sox.