There are few figures in Hollywood who’ve experienced the incredible highs and lows of Ben Affleck. There isn’t another actor working today whose career has included writing, directing, Oscars, Emmys, and Batman within a twenty-year stretch, and a string of tabloid stories have kept Affleck’s name frequently in the news. One of the breakout heartthrobs of the ‘90s, Affleck won an Academy Award for writing Good Will Hunting alongside his childhood best friend, Matt Damon. He quickly ascended to stardom with roles in romantic comedies, dramas, action films, and even the comic book adaptation Daredevil, but after a series of flops, his career began to seriously decline. After many counted him out entirely, Affleck stepped behind the camera for his gripping 2007 directorial debut Gone Baby Gone.

Revealing himself to be a meticulous craftsman of engaging crime thrillers, Affleck’s directorial efforts skyrocketed him among the ranges of the industry’s leading filmmakers, with Argo winning him another Academy Award, this time for Best Picture (after Affleck was notoriously snubbed of a Best Director nomination). Landing the role of Batman in the newly launched DC Extended Universe, it seemed like Affleck was untouchable again. However, after the disappointing Zack Snyder films and a series of subsequent negative press, Affleck’s reputation dipped once more, but this year he’s looking to get back on top again. With Affleck returning behind the camera for Air, as well as appearing as Nike's Phil Knight, Affleck is once again showing his versatility. Here are seven of the most underrated performances he’s ever given.

RELATED: Ben Affleck Explains Why Michael Jordan Is Barely in 'Air'

School Ties

School Ties Ben Affleck Brendan Fraser Matt Damon
Image via Paramount Pictures

The discrimination drama School Ties features an absolute murderer’s row of ‘90s heartthrobs. Set during the 1950s, the film stars Brendan Fraser as David Greene, a talented young football recruit at an exclusive private school. Greene hides his Jewish heritage from his classmates, but he raises suspicions from the school’s privileged top student Charlie Dillon (Matt Damon). The generally likable Damon is posed with the challenge of being an initially warm, yet casually prejudiced snob who only steadily reveals his more sinister intentions. Affleck is once again paired alongside his childhood friend as Dillon’s underling Chesty Smith and shows the same earnest dedication for his companion that he did in Good Will Hunting. Affleck showed he was comfortable playing second fiddle to Damon even when they ventured into darker territory.

Changing Lanes

changing-lanes-ben-affleck-samuel-jackson
Image Via Paramount Pictures

Hollywood simply doesn’t make movies like Changing Lanes anymore. A classic movie star two-hander that tackles broad, yet relevant social themes, the film stars Affleck as a brash young Wall Street attorney, Gavin Banek, who frantically travels across New York City to complete a shady deal for his demanding employer. His relentlessness sparks a car accident with the struggling salesman, Doyle Gipson (Samuel L. Jackson), who himself is desperately late for an important hearing regarding his child’s custody.

Both men are flawed and products of a system that has taken advantage of them, but they become locked in a heated rivalry as they both spiral into rage. Jackson is surprisingly subdued in one of his more sensitive turns. Affleck has the difficult task of getting the viewer to relate to an uptight Wall Street bro, but remarkably the film doesn’t treat the two leads’ challenges as equal, and Gipson’s growth doesn’t absolve Banek of the inherent privileges that he wields over Gipson.

State of Play

State of Play Ben Affleck Russell Crowe
Image via Universal Pictures

Affleck’s name has been a frequent target of the news media throughout his career, and he’s experienced both lavish success and humiliating embarrassment in the public spotlight. Affleck worked this experience into his role as Nick Dunne in David Fincher’s adaptation of Gone Girl, but a few years prior he explored similar themes in the American remake of the beloved BBC political thriller State of Play. Affleck co-stars as disgruntled Congressman Stephen Collins, whose recent affair with his staffer, Sonia Baker (Maria Thayer), comes under scrutiny when the young woman is found murdered. Although Collins is publicly framed as a scheming politician, he was on the verge of uncovering an illicit scheme by senior party members into using private defense contractors to fund mercenary activities in the Middle East. Despite his flaws, Collins has pretty honorable intentions, and it's interesting to watch Affleck try to clear his name as the film’s conspiracies become more intricate.

The Company Men

The Company Men Ben Affleck
Image via The Weinstein Company

The Company Men is a rarely earnest, sensitive take on the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. Although it's centered on the perspective of white-collar, corporate ladder types whose perspective has gained more than enough exposure already, writer/director John Wells examines what it looks like for privileged men to get a dose of reality when they find themselves jobless and contemplating their uncertain futures. Affleck’s Bobby Walker is forced to rapidly adjust, first losing luxury spendings and then forced to put his children's college education in doubt. Affleck doesn’t characterize Walker as angry, but rather confused, and his maturation is conveyed with grace. Affleck also brings his signature comic sarcasm in some of the film’s more humorous scenes, where he takes up a blue-collar job for the first time alongside his idiosyncratic brother-in-law (Kevin Costner).

Live By Night

Zoe Saldana and Ben Affleck in Live by Night
Image Via Warner Bros.

Although it would eventually become overshadowed by his renewed prominence as a leading movie star, Affleck’s initial directorial run was a truly remarkable feat. Gone Baby Gone, The Town, and Argo are all bonafide modern classics, and Affleck had more than earned the right to squeak in a pricey vanity project. He was keen to explore his interest in pulp gangster fare, but unfortunately, Live by Night landed with a thud and became the first critical and financial bomb of his directorial side.

Live by Night isn’t perfect, but its reputation was surrounded by so many other narratives surrounding Affleck’s name at the time that it was denied a nuanced critical debate. While overlong and indulgent, Affleck’s take on the bootlegging era is meticulously crafted with elaborate production design and the film infuses Affleck’s personal politics with its criticisms of suppression within organized religion and the dangers of discriminatory groups. He’s quite engaging doing a Humphrey Bogart impression as the gangster Joe Coughlin, and a more sensitive romantic side plot with Zoe Saldana’s Graciela Corrales showed just how far he had come since the days of Gigli and Bounce.

Triple Frontier

Ben Affleck in Triple Frontier
Image via Netflix

Today’s filmmaking market seems to only support massive tentpole entertainment and lucrative independent films, and the mid-budget star vehicle has moved almost entirely to television. While many of these projects get the green light from Netflix, they’re often buried amidst the streamer’s increasingly unwieldy library. Triple Frontier is just one example, a nonfranchise action crime thriller that feels plucked right out of the ‘90s.

Triple Frontier was in development hell for years, but J.C. Chandor finally took a crack at the story of five former U.S. Army veterans who’ve fallen upon hard times and reluctantly agree to work a heist operation for a South American crime lord. Chandor splits the screen time relatively evenly between Affleck, Oscar Isaac, Charlie Hunnam, Pedro Pascal, and Garret Hedlund. It's definitely Affleck in “sad dad” mode but he has more than enough old-school machismo for those that love ‘90s crime fiction. The moment where Affleck talks to Isaac about advanced combat training while driving his daughter to school and Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain” plays faintly is transcendent cinema.

Jay and Silent Bob Reboot

Jay and Silent Bob Reboot Joey Lauren Adams Ben Affleck
Image via Saban Films

Affleck was a frequent collaborator of Kevin Smith’s throughout the ‘90s, most notably playing comic book artist, Holden McNeil, in Chasing Amy. While the film’s depiction of LGBTQ relationships may have felt like a breakthrough in 1994, a modern viewing reveals more than a few faults in the earnest, yet frequently insensitive film. It doesn’t speak to any poor intentions on the part of either Smith or Affleck, and they both got to acknowledge some of the disparities with Affleck’s recent cameo appearance in the last View Askewniverse project Jay and Silent Bob Reboot.

As Jay and Silent Bob venture to a new and revamped Comic-Con, they encounter their old pal Holden who speaks to them (and in Smith’s typical fourth-wall-breaking technique, the audience) about his own maturation over the years. Affleck is more than forthcoming with the obvious parallels to his own journey, poking fun at his marriage, comeback and subsequent decline, and even “Save Martha.” It’s a charmingly honest, wryly comic intimate moment from one of the most unique actors of his time.