From hero to zero... to hero again

Ben Affleck taking home the Oscar for best picture for Argo came as no surprise.

In fact, the win marks familiar territory for Affleck who has come full circle back to being an Academy Awards darling after a handful of wrong turns in his life and career.

Affleck was first on the Oscar stage 15 years ago, when he and Matt Damon won the Academy Award for best original screenplay for Good Will Hunting. Affleck was 25, already with a few decent film credits under his belt.

Affleck’s excitement was perceived by many as too brash — he barely let Damon get a word in. While it jump-started a lucrative acting career — Armageddon, Pearl Harbor, and Daredevil — Affleck soon found himself fronting reviled disasters like Gigli and Jersey Girl … and caught in a romance with Jennifer Lopez that all but destroyed his credibility.

He and Lopez didn’t last. But after quietly marrying Daredevil co-star Jennifer Garner in 2005, Affleck reinvented himself as a director, making his debut behind the camera with the critically hailed Boston-set crime drama Gone Baby Gone (2007), which scored a best supporting actress nomination for Amy Ryan. After his well-received turn opposite Russell Crowe in State of Play (2009), Affleck starred in and directed 2010’s The Town, a bank heist thriller that earned an Oscar nod for Jeremy Renner.

Which brings us to Argo. Snubbed in the best director race, Affleck found himself on the Oscar stage delivering his first acceptance speech in 15 years as a co-producer of the best picture winner.

The older, wiser, battle-scarred Affleck once again tried to ramble through a list of every person who worked on the film, closing his speech on an emotional note. “I was here 15 years ago or something and I had no idea what I was doing. I stood out here in front of you all and really [was] just a kid. I went out and I never thought I would be back here.

“You have to work harder than you think you possibly can,” he said, near tears. “You can’t hold grudges — it’s hard, but you can’t hold grudges. And it doesn’t matter how you get knocked down in life; that’s going to happen. All that matters is you’ve got to get up.”