Casey Affleck on ‘The Finest Hours’, His Career and More

Casey Affleck plays 40-year-old actor plays Ray Sybert, an engineer who becomes the leader of a 30-man crew after a storm leaves the SS Pendleton vessel split in two, in The Finest Hour.

Unsurprisingly the filming conditions were mostly cold and wet, but Affleck admits he actually discovered certain aspects of making the scenes more realistic aided his portrayal of Ray’s survival mission.

“It was pretty cold,” Affleck admitted during an interview with Geeks of Doom. “We started in the fall and went until Christmas, and it gets pretty cold in Boston during that time, and it was mostly outside. Sometimes it was warmer outside than it was inside, for whatever weird reason. But it was cold. It was cold and wet, and it sucks. But you get used to it, you never really forget about it. It was a nice group of guys you were with, so you get to complain all together. And that’s comforting.”

Asked about having the water thrown at him, Affleck replied: “Oh it helps, for sure, no doubt about it. It is much easier than pretending. All you have to do is get your lines out, and you are already shivering. You can’t but help keep your eyes closed as you are being pounded with water. and then you just look like, you know, a good actor maybe, you know. And like you really just stood there and took so much physical abuse. So I think it makes it easier.”

Despite the often difficult filming conditions, Affleck added that the role has given him a new perspective on certain jobs, such as the engineer role or that of the Coastguard team that came to rescue the ship’s crew.

But one thing the actor is sure of is that he won’t be undergoing a change of profession anytime soon.

“I’ve often thought about doing other things in my life, then I started acting early, I’m 40 now, I think like well maybe try other things, but I can tell you it won’t be in the Coast Guard or like going deep sea fishing because it seems like not for me,” he said. “But you know anything like being a fireman or a policeman or any of those jobs where you’re there to help people. There are times when you are asked to put your own life on the line for someone else’s and that takes a special kind of person I think.”

The Finest Hours is in theaters today!