Ben Affleck Says 'They Made Me Fix My Teeth' and 'Be Sexy' for Armageddon

Frank Masi/Touchstone/Kobal/Shutterstock Ben Affleck in 1998's 'Armageddon'

Ben Affleck is looking back at the requirements he had to meet for his 1998 blockbuster Armageddon.

The actor, 49, is on the cover of Entertainment Weekly's February issue where he spoke to his longtime pal and frequent collaborator Matt Damon about his career.

"I was a little naive about the opinions people would form about me," Affleck admitted about signing on to portray an oil driller trained to be an astronaut in the film. "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?" he recalled of the experience making the film with director Michael Bay and producer Jerry Bruckheimer. "'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."

Affleck revealed Bay "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? We could have made, I think, 400 Chasing Amys for what we made Armageddon for."

The Oscar winner added, "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, 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."

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Armageddon followed a group of oil drillers trained for a space mission when an asteroid threatens to collide with Earth. The drillers are assigned to drill on the surface of the asteroid and detonate a bomb within it.

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The movie also starred Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton and Liv Tyler. The movie became a commercial success, grossing $553 million worldwide and becoming the highest-grossing film of 1998.

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Affleck's new film The Tender Bar is now streaming on Prime Video.