Matt Damon, Ben Affleck paid for auditions from joint bank account

Matt Damon has revealed that he shared a bank account with best friend Ben Affleck before they rose to fame.

He said that they often used to share their funds to pay for audition trips.

"I started coming down here to New York by myself with money I had made in local commercials in Boston," the Daily Express quoted Damon as telling 'Piers Morgan Tonight'.

"Ben and I actually had a joint bank account and the bank account was money we had made from doing local commercials and we could only use it on trips to New York to audition.

"When I look back at that, a 16 and 14 year old, we were really young to be taking the bus by ourselves to New York and spending a day going to an audition - we were living adult lives as teenagers."

American Idol

The brutal cuts and the Group Day are over. Now it's time for more solo performances and the patented "American Idol" Rooms of Doom, but we are not learning the semi-finalists Thursday night (Feb. 17). They still have the Las Vegas rounds yet to come.

Haley Reinhart is first with "God Bless the Child" and she has such a bluesy, growly voice, it's wonderful, though a little theatrical. She is followed by Asthon Jones and Thia Megia, who also both blow it out (despite Thia's crazy Cosby sweater).

After the girls were off to a hot start, Adrian Michael, Caleb Johnson, Frances Coontz struggle with the band, then Clint Jun Gamboa does some screamin' on "Georgia On My Mind." Maybe that's some people's taste, but I prefer that song much quieter. It's beauty is lost when you embellish it like that, I think. Kendra Chantelle and Sophia Shorai also tackle "Georgia" and I like their versions better.

Chris Medina and Carson Higgins are both doing "My Prerogative," though they are doing very different styles. Medina's version doesn't work quite as well as Carson's upbeat version, but they'll probably both be OK.

Affleck's heist film tops US box office

The Town, Ben Affleck's fast-paced bank heist flick set in his hometown of Boston debuted as the top movie at North American theaters this weekend, industry estimates showed on Sunday.

Supplanting Resident Evil: Afterlife in the top spot, The Town, the second film to be directed by the actor, earned 23.8 million dollars in ticket sales, according to projections from box office tracker Exhibitor Relations.

Second place went to another new film, teen comedy Easy A about a high school girl who lies about losing her virginity to improve her social standing, which earned 18.2 million dollars.

M. Night Shyamalan's Devil supernatural thriller about Satan trapping victims in a Philadelphia high-rise came in third, raking 12.6 million dollars in tickets sales.

Resident Evil, the latest in a long-running science fiction series, fell from the top spot last week to fourth with 10.1 million dollars.

Alpha and Omega, about a wolfpack in the wilds of a Canadian nature reserve, opened in fifth place with 9.2 million dollars in tickets sold.

In sixth place was Takers, the bank-robbery thriller starring Hayden Christensen, Idris Elba and singers Chris Brown and T.I. which earned three million dollars.

George Clooney's spy flick The American was seventh with earnings of 2.76 million dollars.

Rounding out the top ten were Inception in eighth place with a shade over two million dollars in ticket sales; crime comedy The Other Guys with two million dollars, and romance flick Eat, Pray, Love which claimed 1.7 million dollars to finish in 10th place.

Affleck won't make a film with wife Jennifer Garner

"Jen is a great actress. I would be profoundly lucky to work with her. But something tells me that people don't want to see real-life couples together at the movies," USmagazine.com quoted the 38-year-old was as saying when asked about making a movie with wife.

"I think audiences have a hard time suspending disbelief. They already know a whole bunch of things about the relationship you have with the other person and if you try and thrust you and another person into a fictional relationship, I think it is distracting," he added.

Before their relationship began, he and Garner, 38, appeared onscreen together in 2003's Daredevil. They are now parents to two daughters: Violet, 4, and Seraphina, 20 months.

Affleck sex scene was raunchy

Jon Hamm has joked that his sex scene with Ben Affleck in The Town was cut because it was too explicit.

The Mad Men star quipped at the Toronto Film Festival that his imaginary love scene with the crime drama's director and co-star was a good choice to scrap, reports People.

He said: "My sex scenes with Ben, which were cut, I think, wisely... were raunchy."

When asked how Affleck was on set, Hamm added: "It was an awful experience. [Ben's] a horrible human being. Talent-free, I guess we could probably say. It was pure misery... two and a half months of absolute, abject terror."

The Town arrives in US cinemas on Friday.

Ben Affleck ashamed of 'horrible and atrocious' directorial debut

Ben Affleck has admitted that he is still embarrassed by his directorial debut. The movie star shot I Killed My Lesbian Wife, Hung Her on a Meat Hook, and Now I Have a Three-Picture Deal With Disney way back in 1993.

"It's horrible. It's atrocious. I knew I wanted to be a director, and I did a couple of short films, and this is the only one that haunts me. I''m not proud of it," the Daily Express quoted Entertainment Weekly as saying.

"It looks like it was made by someone who has no prospects, no promise," he added.

However, Affleck bagged the Best Screenplay gold at the Oscars with Good Will Hunting.