Ben Affleck had to transform himself physically from head to toe to be part of this Hollywood big-budget Michael Bay hit, Armageddon.

 Fixing his smile was just one thing Ben Affleck had to transform for Michael Bay’s film Armageddon. It’s not often discussed, but the beauty standards for male actors in Hollywood are just as skewed. The transformation demanded of Affleck for this movie went beyond just his appearance.

His iconic boy-next-door look, which had endeared him to audiences, was deemed too ordinary for a film about an apocalyptic threat. He had to adopt a look that was equally extraordinary, one that could match this out-of-this-world film.

Ben Affleck Had to Transform His Look from Head to Toe for Armageddon 

Landing the lead role in a Hollywood blockbuster often means more than just acing the lines, especially when one is working with a director like Michael Bay, who’s as obsessed with aesthetics.

For instance, when Ben Affleck was cast in Armageddon, it wasn’t just about nailing the role, the producers insisted on a top-to-bottom makeover. It all started with fixing his teeth, but soon it spiraled into a full-blown list of “must-fix” items. Affleck even spoke out about the experience in an Entertainment Weekly interview saying,

And I was a little naive about the opinions people would form about me. 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. 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?

Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck in Armageddon Credits: Touchstone Pictures

In a way, one could say Ben Affleck was the male equivalent of what Megan Fox was in Transformers. As strange as it might sound, his character, AJ, was an oil driller who trained to become an astronaut with the mission of saving Earth from an asteroid ready to wipe out all life.

Micheal Bay’s Armageddon Made Ben Affleck a True Hollywood Star

No matter how much people might poke fun at Armageddon, it delivered big-time, topping the global box office in 1998 with a whopping $554 million(via Box Office Mojo). And Ben Affleck was truly excited to be a part of such a huge deal.

In that same Entertainment Weekly interview (the interviewer was Matt Damon by the way), Affleck also opened up about his experience working on the film, especially after the success of Good Will Hunting. He said,

Bruce Willis, Owen Wilson, Billy Bob [Thornton], Mike Duncan. This was real Hollywood, which I felt like I had never seen. They dug out two stages of Disney for huge asteroid craters, and I didn’t even think about the fact that the basic premise of the movie was totally absurd.

Why are they training oil drillers to be astronauts rather than astronauts to be oil drillers? You would think the learning curve would be somewhat more steep on the oil-drillers-to-astronauts route. But it was fun and the right time.

Liv Tyler and Ben Affleck in a still from Armageddon Credits: Touchstone Pictures

Believe it or not, Armageddon left a serious mark both on Ben Affleck’s image and career, paving the way for him to become the A-list star he’d later become. This film in a totally non-ironical way was his launchpad, which transformed him into a bona fide Hollywood heartthrob with both the look and the flair to match.