Ben Affleck had to make a few changes before appearing in Armageddon.
The Tender Bar star was recently interviewed by frequent collaborator and friend Matt Damon for Entertainment Weekly. During their chat, the two went over Ben's impressive catalog of movies, which led him to recall his process for starring in the 1998 science fiction flick.
"I was a little naive about the opinions people would form about me," Ben shared. "Or Michael [Bay] and Jerry [Bruckheimer]'s focus on aesthetics, like, ‘You guys gotta go to the tanning bed!' They made me fix my teeth and work out and be sexy. Be sexy, how do I do that? ‘Go to the gym!' Running in the gym and putting oil on my body and stuff, and it just turned out to be a long-form version of one of those male topless calendars, in a garage, carrying a tire, kind of greased up."
In the box-office hit film, Ben plays an oil driller part of a team recruited by NASA to help them stop an asteroid from hurling towards Earth.
"Michael had a vision of a glistening male torso in the oil, and he was like, ‘That's going to go in the trailer and sell tickets!' And you know, what can you say?" Ben continued. Referring to his 1997 rom-com, he added, "We could have made, I think, 400 Chasing Amys for what we made Armageddon for."
However, Ben also revealed that there's one silver lining when it comes to the three very important viewers.
"It's funny because that's the one movie of mine that my kids have watched and they'll kind of all admit to liking," the actor, who shares three kids with ex Jennifer Garner, admitted. "Even though they relentlessly mock it and me. ‘What are you, driving a tank on the moon?' But they had fun, you know what I mean? They won't even watch The Town. So, there you have it."
E! News has reached out to Bay and Bruckheimer's reps for comment.