Ben Affleck is becoming as comfortable behind the camera as he is in front of it. Having decided only to direct 2007's Gone Baby Gone, Affleck signed himself up for acting duties as well on last year's highly lauded, and commercially successful The Town.
With the political thriller Argo, it seemed like Affleck was just in director mode again, first casting Alan Arkin and, later, John Goodman. Now Variety reports Affleck has cast himself in the lead role of CIA exfiltration expert Tony Mendez, the man behind the plan to pose as a fake Hollywood movie in order to rescue six American hostages trapped in the Canadian embassy in Iran. As they say in Hollywood, it's all about who you know.
Chris Terrio (Heights) wrote the screenplay, based on the 2007 Wired article "How the CIA Used a Fake Sci-Fi Flick to Rescue Americans from Tehran". Arkin plays a Hollywood producer named Lester Siegel, while Goodman plays makeup artist John Chambers, who won an Academy Award for his work on the Planet of the Apes series.
Kidman romances The Paperboy, Strathairn has Lincoln's back >> Posted 06.28.11 by Ryan