It has been a rough year for Ben Affleck.
In July, the actor announced he and wife Jennifer Garner would be separating after 10 years of marriage, and around the same time was spotted having a large amount of one-on-one time with nanny to the couple's three children, Christine Ouzounian.
But, luckily, there is one person who is willing to provide a positive character reference, Affleck's old mate Matt Damon.
Affleck's Good Will Hunting co-writer and co-star has jumped to his defence, with Damon telling The Hollywood Reporter there is "nobody who's more misunderstood" than the actor, who faced a similar level of public scrutiny during the breakdown of his relationship with Jennifer Lopez in 2004.
"Ten years ago, the public image of him could not have been farther apart from who he actually is," Damon said in the interview published on Wednesday.
"It was like he was being cast in a role, that he was a talentless kind of meathead, with his whole relationship with Jennifer Lopez. He just got cast as this person that he wasn't."
Damon, 44, went on to describe the experience of supporting Affleck, 43, through the tabloid coverage of his separation from Lopez as "painful".
"It was painful to be his friend, because it wasn't fair, you know? To my mind, nobody really got him at all. And through his work, he climbed from the bottom of the mountain all the way back up to the top and past where either of us had ever been."
Damon and Affleck met as children growing up in Cambridge, Massachussetts.
Both men attended Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, a public high school in their hometown, where they became friends through involvement in school productions.
"Matt and I had identical interests," Affleck told the Boston Herald in 1998. "So whether we ended up successful or making hot dogs at Dodger games, we knew we'd remain friends."
After high school, Damon went on to study Arts at Harvard, while Affleck moved to New York to pursue acting before relocating to Los Angeles.
The pair were reunited in the early 1990s, when they decided to adapt a screenplay Damon had written as a university assignment into a feature-length script.
The result was 1997's Good Will Hunting, a film which earned both men Oscars.
Affleck and Damon have remained firm friends since then, and live in the same Los Angeles neighbourhood.
Earlier this week, Damon found himself in hot water after a discussion of the pair's friendship managed to transition into what seemed to be an assertion that LGBT actors should not reveal their sexuality.
Damon, who is currently doing press for his upcoming film The Martian, had been discussing rumours that he and Affleck were dating when Good Will Hunting was released.
"When Ben and I first came on the scene there were rumours that we were gay because it was two guys who wrote a script together," he told the Guardian.
"I know. It's just like any piece of gossip… and it put us in a weird position of having to answer, you know what I mean?"
The actor, who has three children with wife Luciana Bozán Barroso, transitioned into discussing how much actors should reveal about their private lives, saying that "you're a better actor the less people know about you".
"Whether you're straight or gay, people shouldn't know anything about your sexuality because that's one of the mysteries that you should be able to play," he said.
Damon has since clarified his comments, saying that his words had been misinterpreted.
"I was just trying to say actors are more effective when they're a mystery," Damon told The Ellen DeGeneres Show on Tuesday.
"Somebody picked it up and said I said gay actors should get back in the closet. Which is like I mean it's stupid, but it is painful when things get said that you don't believe."
