Damon was forced to wear an eyepatch after Affleck hit him with an acorn on the “School Ties” set, an accident Affleck thought would get him fired.

Ben Affleck and Matt Damon remember their ‘biggest fight’: ‘I had to go to the hospital’

Damon was forced to wear an eyepatch after Affleck hit him with an acorn on the "School Ties" set, an accident Affleck thought would get him fired.

By Emlyn Travis

Emlyn Travis is a news writer at **. She has been working at EW since 2022. Her work has previously appeared on MTV News, Teen Vogue, and *NME*.

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January 14, 2026 11:07 a.m. ET

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Ben Affleck and Matt Damon on 'The Tonight Show' on Jan. 13, 2026. Credit:

Todd Owyoung/NBC

Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are looking back at the craziest fight they ever had in their decades-long friendship. **

The actors and longtime besties, who star in the upcoming crime thriller *The Rip*, revealed that they once got into an acorn-fueled altercation that sent Damon to the hospital. **

"It was our biggest fight," Affleck said on Tuesday's episode of *The Tonight Show. *

The cast of 1992's 'School Ties'.

FilmPublicityArchive/United Archives via Getty

Damon explained to host Jimmy Fallon that the incident occurred on the set of their 1992 film,* School Ties. ***

"We were 19, 20 years old, and there were a bunch of us," he recalled. "Brendan Fraser was in the movie, Cole Hauser was in the movie, Chris O’Donnell. And in between takes we were just bored, and we were walking across this school where we were shooting, and there were acorns, and so we just started whipping them at each other."

To which Affleck dryly quipped, "Because when you're 19, that seems like a good idea."

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It was all fun and games — until someone got hurt. "He [Affleck] threw one at Cole, and Cole moved, and I turned, and it literally hit me in the eye," Damon said. "It's the only time in my life I've ever had, like, [I] didn't have time to blink. And I had to go to the hospital."**

While Damon was concerned about his eye, his pal Affleck was worried about how the injury would impact his career.

"Mind you, I had like three lines in the movie," he added. "And while I cared about Matt having vision, my first thought was, 'I gotta be fired for this.'"

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The damage was serious enough that Damon had to wear an eyepatch for a few days while he recovered.

"It was like, he really —" the *Odyssey* actor said, before Affleck jokingly interjected, "Well, I mean, if you're gonna play with fire…"

The *Argo* director noted that at that point Damon wasn't the only person wearing an eyepatch on set; the film's first A.D., Newt Arnold, also wore one. **

"He was a great first A.D., old first A.D.," Damon said, adding that the pair took photos together with their eye patches.

Directed by Robert Mandel, *School Ties* tells the story of a young football phenom named David (Fraser), who receives the opportunity to attend a prestigious prep school but finds himself unsure if he should tell his WASP classmates that he's Jewish.**

Watch Affleck and Damon recall their "fight" in the clip above.

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