Ben Affleck tackles the title role in The Accountant. It was one of the most challenging, yet rewarding, roles in the actor’s career (we loved it, check out our The Accountant review). Affleck portrays a man who is gifted with numbers (clearly he has chosen the right vocation). But that is not all. We learn through his actions and flashbacks that he is on the autism spectrum. His upbringing was less than easy. He had a military father who felt that his son needs tough love to survive in a world that would reject him.
As we meet him in the present, he has taken the risky role as accountant for some of the most dangerous people in the world. He looks over their books and discovers what others don’t see – missing money that these unsavory types will see is returned. As his clientele is the worst of the worst, he knows full well how to defend himself. As gifted a mathematician as he is, he equally is at defending himself.
We caught up with Affleck at the press day for The Accountant, where he talked about the similarities between this character and Batman, the pressure to get this role right for the millions who are afflicted by autism and what it is like to work repeatedly with his The Accountant and Justice League co-star, J.K. Simmons.
Q: Is this guy like Bruce Wayne, at all?
BA: He has the same chin. If you stretch hard enough, you can draw parallels with a lot of different characters, but this is a really distinct, unique character in a unique film. What drew me to it was Gavin (O’Connor, the director) and his work, and the fact that it was very unusual. You think you’re getting one kind of movie, and then you get something that’s smarter, more interesting and more challenging, and is thematically resonant for people who are different and what they’re capable of. It’s about how we try to protect our children from home and, in some ways, harm them more by doing so. That’s what interested me about the project.
Q: Did your training as Batman help you with all of the action in this?
BA: Gavin was very concerned about the action being real and good, which is something he’d done very well in Warrior, for example. So, training was as much a part of this as it was for the Batman movie. So, I had to really be on top of my game and work hard with some really great professionals who were very helpful and really good at the stuff, and they educated me about this fighting style (the Indonesian style of Pentak Silat). It was a learning experience. I have a lot of respect for the guys who do it for a living.
Q: Who would win, if The Accountant had to fight Batman?
BA: I’ve only thought about beating Jason Bourne. I haven’t thought about that match-up.
Q: Now that you’re working in such a gigantic franchise playing Batman, is it important for you, at this point, to take a complex role like this, as well as create one of your own, in your forthcoming directorial film, Live By Night?
BA: It’s important for me. I’m not much of a tactician when it comes to what a career should look like. I’m not a big believer in that strategic level of planning. It’s more about projects that interest me and move me, and part of that is variation. You would get bored doing the same thing, over and over again. With Batman, The Accountant and Live By Night, I’m lucky that I’ve had the chance to do things that are completely different. It keeps me activated and engaged, and hopefully doing my best work.
Q: What did you find to be the biggest challenge of this role, and how did you find who you wanted this guy to be?
BA: It was a very challenging role and it required a lot of research. Gavin and I went around and spent time with people who were at various places on the autism spectrum, and observed behavior and talked to them and engaged with them in everything from what their daily life is like to what type of movie they’d like to see about someone with autism. We got a lot of different responses, but really, the value was in grounding the guy and making him like real people we had met and seen in real life, rather than just an imagined version of what it might be. It was a cobbling together of observed behaviors and character traits from people we met. That’s what I anchored the performance in.
Q: How did you decide where you where you wanted him to be on the autism spectrum and what mannerisms you wanted him to have?
BA: That’s all stuff I just picked up and observed in people. There wasn’t any one person where we thought, “Okay, we’re going to build a character on this guy.” It was more Gavin and I meeting people and observing things, and when we’d see something that felt close to what we were doing in the movie, we’d make a note of it. We wanted to make sure we were doing something realistic and that was rooted in reality, so it was about putting together those behaviors. A lot of them were observed, and some of them were stolen. That’s the way you do it.
Q: Did you work on all of that for a long time?
BA: Yeah, it was a lot of work because we cared about getting it right. The last thing we wanted to do was a cartoon version, a caricature or an over-simplification because it is a condition that people really have. The more complicated the better because that meant it was more real. The people that we met and talked to all had very complicated situations and lives. There was an amazing spectrum of special gifts that we found. So, it should feel complicated. On the one hand, he does want to connect, and he wants to connect very much, but some things can’t be fixed. He doesn’t connect in a way where he can put his arms around this woman (Dana, played by Anna Kendrick) and kiss her, but he connects with her in another way. Seeing that is what’s complicated and what’s interesting about it.
Q: Aside from this, you’re also working with J.K. Simmons on the DC films. How did this experience compare?
BA: It was great to work with J.K. again. I wish we had the chance to do more. Hopefully, we will in the future, so it was a nice tease. It’s also really cool, when you do a part in a movie; you don’t know what the other actors are doing when it’s compartmentalized, like this story is. It was a real treat to get to go and sit down and watch the movie, for the first time, and go, “Oh, that’s what they were up to! I really should have brought my A-game. They’re pretty good!” It’s like seeing the special effects get put into a movie. You’re just out there with a green screen and a tennis ball, and then you watch the movie and it’s an asteroid careening towards Earth. It was similarly pleasantly exciting and surprising, how great their storyline was in the movie, how much it carried the film, and how tight and sharp their acting is. I was just psyched to be in a movie with them.
Q: This has to be one of the first autistic heroes in film. Was there anything you were most worried about getting right?
BA: What we wanted to do was be respectful and be accurate, and to tell a truthful story. We didn’t want to try to sex it up or gloss over things. We just wanted to peer into the reality of that life. Also, I think it was a good thing showing that different can be good, better and special. Obviously, anytime you’re gonna deal with a real-life issue like this, that touches people lives and that is really important to some people, there are going to be a lot of people with really strong opinions and feelings. Our hope is that people in that community, who are on the spectrum of autism, like the movie and like that it’s a superhero story about them. That was what I got from the people that I met with. That’s what they wanted to see. That’s what they were excited about, so I hope that’s what we deliver on.
Q: Is this the most complex character you’ve ever played?
BA: Yeah, it’s definitely the most complicated and interesting character that I’ve played, for sure.
Q; When you met with individuals on the autism spectrum, what most struck you about them?
BA: One thing that struck me was how funny and how much wit people had, who had Asperger’s. There were a lot of laughs and a lot of funny observations. I wanted to keep that aspect of the wry, observational, detached behavior. But humor is such a powerful form of intelligence and I was really moved by then, so I wanted to include some of that. It’s a fine line. We didn’t want to make fun of this character, but he is witty, the way he sees the world in his own unique way.
Q: How did they react to meeting you?
BA: The Batman character has a lot of fans. It turns out that’s a well-known character, so that was fun. I don’t think the movie had come out yet, though. There are some people on the spectrum who, just because of the way their social thinking works, they don’t observe the same social niceties or have certain tact. I remember one girl was like, “I’ve never heard of you! Who are you?!” And I was like, “I’m just an actor.” I got a lot of fun reactions. But the truth is the biggest reaction was that people were psyched to be a part of making a movie. They understand that they were coming up with ideas for a character. They really wanted to volunteer and help out. It was also educational because I had this idea of autism being withdrawn, but these people were actually quite enthusiastic, engaged and fired up about participating, in their own unique ways.