FINALLY, the wind of change seems to be blowing for Ben Affleck.

Despite winning an Oscar, along with best friend Matt Damon, for the screenplay of his first major movie, Good Will Hunting in 1997, the past few years have seen him head perilously close to oblivion.

It didn't help that he had a high-profile and ill-fated engagement to Jennifer Lopez, strutting around in her music video before their film together, Gigli, was panned and the two split.

Or that Trey Parker and Matt Stone were more cruel about him than anyone else in Team America: World Police, writing the song Pearl Harbor, which included the lyrics "I need you like Ben Affleck needs acting school/He was terrible in that film".

Poor Ben's been nominated for seven Razzie awards (which reward "the worst" of each year, in opposition to the Oscars) in his career too, and there just seemed to be something about him which made the industry want to give him a hard time.

But now, finally, the tides have turned. The 34-year-old is happily married to his Dare-devil co-star Jennifer Garner and the couple have a baby daughter, Violet.

And he's just won the greatest plaudits of his life, plus two acting awards - Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival and Supporting Actor of the Year at the Hollywood Film Festival - for his role as former TV star George Reeves in new film Hollywoodland.

Reeves apparently committed suicide, having been unable to escape the legacy of Superman, the role for which he became famous on television in 1950s America.

Allen Coulter's film is a very well-crafted journey through Reeves' life, and through detective Louis Simo's (Adrien Brody) investigation of the suspicious circumstances surrounding his death.

Star factfile Name: Benjamin Geza Affleck
Bet you didn't know that: With the exception of Clerks, he has appeared in all of director Kevin Smith's films
Where you have seen him before: Shakespeare in Love, Pearl Harbor, Daredevil
Where you will hear him next: Smokin' Aces

The script must have been of very obvious quality, but did very tall Ben - who's here to premiere the movie at The London Film Festival - realise just how much good it would do his own career to play the part?

"It seemed pretty clear to me," he says, looking clean-cut and handsome in a crisp, blue shirt and trousers.

"I chased this part as I thought it would be a good coup for me to get it. It seemed pretty clear to me that the part itself was pretty rich and full - it was great.

"There was a lot to say; he was a very greg-arious, generous, outgoing guy who became this icon of masculinity in 1950s post-war American virility but there was, underneath that, this really tragic sad soul.

"It was pretty clear to me that whoever played this part, it would be good for them. So I'm pleased that who ended up playing it was me."

Those who know have commented on the striking physical resemblance between himself and Reeves. Had anyone ever noticed that before?

"You know, I can't take a lot of credit for it. Something we really worked hard on with the wardrobe and the production designer and Allen was that, clearly, there's a real onus on you to do something correctly when every-body, at least in the United States, had a really clear specific idea of what this guy looked like. And even more so, what he looked like as Clark Kent and as Superman."

This year has, of course, also seen a new version of Superman, Bryan Singer's Superman Returns, hit the big screen. Had Ben ever been approached at any stage to play the role?

"I'd certainly not been formally approached, but I had definitely heard about it. One of the nice things about playing a superhero in Daredevil is that you are not later on asked to play any more superheroes. I had kinda inoculated myself.

"The approach to playing a superhero in this movie was about how humiliating it was. He loathed the suit. It was a constant reminder of his thwarted ambition and his own self-loathing.

He hadn't achieved being a serious actor; quite the opposite, he'd become a silly actor.

"And the suit was very uncomfortable. They hadn't designed the fake muscles to look good yet - it was just a wool sweater, basically, and the lights were 10 times hotter because of technical reasons back then. So it was a sort of continuing humiliation for him. In fact, as the series went on and he got more control, the amount of Superman in each episode would diminish.

"One of the things it channelled was that experience that I'd had of wearing a big red leather thing on my upper torso with a mask I couldn't see through and an outfit that completely inhibited movement, feeling humiliated and like a fool. I recalled that."

Hollywoodland also comments on the very different way in which studios operated then; how they'd protect their star commodities from scandal and make sure that no dirty laundry was aired in public.

This seems to be an aspect of the era which, as Ben makes clear, he could see the positive side of.

"They used to have an investment in you, an actual literal investment in an actor. You paid them some money, you had a contract with them, almost like a commodity. You were investing in pork bellies, so you followed through to make sure pork bellies did well.

"They had more of a vertical monopoly that went to camera equipment and props and also the kind of factors in making movies. They put some money in you and you were kind of part of that machine and as a part of that machine, you were expected to act in seven movies a year.

"I don't know what it says about the business, but they probably made better movies when they were making them like a factory.

"There's now, I would call it, a little bit of the walk-the-plank phenomenon. You do a movie, it doesn't work and the idea is, you know what, you took the money, walk the plank. Go out there and talk to the people. Sit there across from the journalists, I saw your film' imitates sneering English accent.

"But, the truth is, there was something about the larger culture that changed. If you look backwards, it wasn't just actors, it was President Kennedy, a lot of different things.

There was a certain level where people wouldn't print something they didn't think was decent or tasteful. And I think, for the better in some ways, journalism has become more investigative and more critical."

Finally, how does it feel to have the press on his side, for once?

"It's much nicer to be praised than to be damned," he admits, smiling.

"But you have to have a certain sense of your own priorities and ideas about what works and what doesn't because, otherwise, if you're just looking for eternal validation all the time, you can be motivated by the wrong things.

"I feel pretty successful about some movies I've been in which have been not greeted with a lot of enthusiasm, for instance the work that I did in it that I'm really proud of and that I like.

"I do trust my own criteria and, you know, conversely, there are movies which I've been in that have been very successful that I have hated. So who's to say?"

  • Hollywoodland is showing at Odeon, Basingstoke Leisure Park, now.