‘Gone Girl’: Ben Affleck On Why He Took The Role & Achieving That Pivotal Smile

Ben Affleck will play the much-maligned Nick Dunne in the upcoming big screen adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s “Gone Girl,” and the star told Access Hollywood he took the role for one specific reason – the chance to work with director David Fincher.

“What drew me for sure was not the potential killer aspect. What drew me to this was really the director, you know? David Fincher, that’s really who I wanted to work with,” Ben told Access’ Shaun Robinson at the “Gone Girl” junket on Saturday. “I thought I could learn something from him [and]as a director I wanted to. I felt safe acting for him, particularly given that it was a kind of warts and all, very naked performance.

“And it’s interesting to try to play with the role where you’re asking the audience to go like, ‘Do I like this guy? Or did he maybe do something really, really wrong?'” he continued.

Ben said he understands some of Nick’s character traits, especially when it comes to trying to do the right thing but seeming a little off-putting to strangers.

“You can’t get in to playing somebody unless you really empathize with them, you really understand them and can motivate them,” he said. “And I thought Nick cares about making other people feel comfortable and wants to make people feel at ease and was brought up a certain way to have certain kind of manners and often times that kind of gets used against him, in a world that doesn’t necessarily value that, or often times takes advantage of that.”

A key scene in the film revolves around a non-self-aware grin given to reporters by Nick at a press conference for his missing wife. He attempts to diffuse the tense environment by flashing a smile (but is then crucified in the press when a photo of him smiling from ear to ear next to his wife’s missing poster is published).

The actor said achieving the perfect grin for that scene took dozens of takes.

“David was really obsessed with this moment — the smile in front of this wanted poster with a guy who, as I said is a people pleaser, and so they say ‘Smile’ and he just like kinda smiles and then realizes ‘Oh sh*t, I shouldn’t have smiled right there,'” he said. “[David] was like, ‘Do a smile,’ and I was like, ‘What are you talking about? What smile?’ So we did about a hundred different smiles.

“I don’t know what ‘that’ smile is – it certainly took long enough to get there!” he continued. “We found ‘that’ smile, but we did about 50 takes of ‘that’ smile.”

Ben walked a tight line while playing Nick, as the plot requires him to seem suspicious and somewhat unlikable, but not so vapid and empty that the audience loses interest in his storyline.

“Usually protagonists in movies aren’t allowed to make certain kinds of mistakes. They’re not allowed to have certain kinds of character flaws. Whereas this part, the guy does make some choices that are very questionable and the fear is that you’re gonna lose the audience. That they’re gonna go, ‘We don’t like this guy, we don’t care about him, we don’t follow him anymore,'” he said. “So my job was to try to generate some empathy and also say, ‘Hey, he’s a real person who does things that we all pretend we don’t think about, but that maybe some of us do it.'”

“Gone Girl,” which also stars Rosamund Pike, Neil Patrick Harris, Carrie Coon and Tyler Perry, hits theaters on Friday.

— Erin O’Sullivan