Onwards and upwards for Affleck

Do not, however, assume that there is anything still going on between them. The romance is officially over. Their recent drama, Bounce, was filmed just as mates.

"I think it convinced me I was more grown up than I thought I was," says Affleck. "That I was actually able to work with somebody I had dated and be friends." Affleck has been linked with Shoshanna Lowenstein, ex-fiancée of Jerry Seinfeld. Though he's saying nothing about her.

Like a lot of big people - and Affleck is officially 6ft 3in - he has a slouchy gentleness about him, like a slobbering mastiff puppy, blissfully unaware of its own strength. One minute he's FHM man, recent purchaser of a $1.7 million Hollywood mansion, filling its garage with motorbikes. Next, he's the sensitive artiste, contemplating life at his Manhattan loft (just round the corner from Gwynnie's).

Good Will Hunting, the story of a reluctant genius, embodied by an Massachusetts Institute of Technology janitor, encapsulates Affleck perfectly. Not without reason. His own father worked in a similar job. It is no surprise that both Affleck and Damon, best buddies from Boston, dropped out of academia themselves - Affleck from the University of Vermont and, later, Occidental College, California - in order to seek their Hollywood fortunes. There, with their careers going nowhere, they decided to write their own script. The rest is history. Good Will Hunting struck gold. Not since Tarantino stepped out of the video store had Tinseltown witnessed such a Cinderella story.

The pair have since trodden separate paths. Damon, the better actor, went on to Saving Private Ryan, but Affleck has the bigger bank balance - his going rate is $12.5 million per picture. Though surprisingly, not for Pearl Harbor. The $135 million war epic was so tightly budgeted, the actors worked with a promise of deferred payment from the profits.

"Which is Hollywood's way of saying you get no money, because there never is any later," grumbles Affleck.

His bank manager must be cringing. Two years ago Affleck was fleeced by Dana Giacchetto, the "money manager" who took a number of young stars to the cleaners. Last August, in the Hard Rock Cafe in Las Vegas, Affleck and Damon won $140,000 at blackjack but tipped it all away to the restaurant staff, some of whom went home $5,000 richer.

Some things can't be bought. Affleck is the youngest ever recipient of a Best Screenplay Oscar - at 25, one year younger than the previous record holder, Orson Welles, 26 when he penned Citizen Kane.

Not all are quite so cosy with this situation. Detractors suggest that Affleck and Damon received a lot of "help" in writing Good Will Hunting (from veteran screenwriter William Goldman). Indeed, Affleck has joked about being the Milli Vanilli of the Academy Awards. Though Goldman has since vindicated the boys.

As for the promised follow-up writerly effort, Affleck has written nothing since. "The window you have as an actor is narrow," he says. "As a consequence of struggling to be an actor for so many years, you feel this compulsion to automatically keep working. Although I was reading over something that my brother Casey and Matt Damon are working on and it got me all interested in writing again."

At the moment he is preoccupied with Pearl Harbor and the critics. Damn the torpedoes, says Affleck.

"This is not a movie where the reviews are as important to me as the reaction of the Second World War veterans and Pearl Harbor survivors, to whom this movie is dedicated," he says.

"If those people like the movie but the movie fails commercially, I will still be happy."