Matt Damon Breaks Silence on Ben Affleck’s Massive Back Tattoo

Ben Affleck’s long-time friend and colleague in the acting world, Matt Damon, finally opened up about his thoughts on Affleck’s massive, multi-colored Phoenix tattoo.

“It’s not one man’s job to tell another man what he can do to his back,” Damon said in an interview on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. “I support him in all his artistic expression.”

While fans had been speculating about it for a few years, the tattoo was finally revealed in its full glory over the weekend when a paparazzo snapped a photo of a shirtless Affleck on a Hawaiian beach back on March 15.

The tattoo, for those who still haven’t seen, is of a massive phoenix that stretches from the top of his shoulder blade down past his waist.

Fans first caught a glimpse of the bottom part of the tattoo weeks after Affleck’s public split from Jennifer Garner back in 2015. In December of the same year, Affleck was spotted wearing a backless gown on the set of his self-directed crime drama Live by Night, which showed off a good portion of the bird.

But in an interview promoting Justice League, Affleck admitted he was keeping the tattoo a secret for personal reasons.

“I have a lot of tattoos. It’s true, I do,” Affleck said in an interview with Entertainment Tonight. He went on to say the image didn’t have “a good representation of it in the media.”

“I don’t have them places where you can see them, because that’s private,” he said.

Months after the Live By Night set photo was leaked, Affleck’s ex-wife Garner addressed the tattoo rumors in an interview with Vanity Fair.

You know what we would say in my hometown about that? ‘Bless his heart.’ A phoenix rising from the ashes. Am I the ashes in this scenario?. I take umbrage. I refuse to be the ashes.”

Damon found himself in some hot water early in the year when he made comments regarding the #MeToo Movement that were very poorly received.

In an interview with Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb on the TODAY Show back this past January, he promised to “keep his mouth closed” going forward.

“I think ultimately what it is for me is I don’t want to further anybody’s pain with anything I do or say, so for that, I’m really sorry,” Damon said. “[With] Time’s Up, a lot of those women are my dear friends, and I love them and respect them and support what they’re doing and want to be a part of that change and want to go along for the ride, but I should get in the backseat and close my mouth for a while.”