Actor Ben Affleck recently revealed that he had experienced a 'schadenfreude' mentality from people about his career. Speaking on the podcast Happy Sad Confused, Affleck said that he decided to become a director with 2007's Gone Baby Gone partly because he thought his acting career was pretty much over at the time and since he also wanted a shot at direction.

He said that people treated singer Britney Spears when she was facing mental health issues with "a gleeful celebration" and "a hideous collective schadenfreude". The actor-filmmaker soon revealed that he, too, experienced similar treatment from people. "There were times when people would say something like, 'Well, one hopes Ben Affleck is dead soon.'"

The actor-director also recalled some harsh feedback for his directorial debut, Gone Baby Gone, including one that went along the lines of, 'Fine, this is not like the worst piece of s**t you've ever seen.' While Affleck suggested that he realised that such reactions was part and parcel of the business, he also found it a bit like 'high-school bullying'.

He soon compared the recent reactions to Tom Cruise's Digger to bullying. "You see it happening now, frankly, with Digger. Everybody wants to celebrate this bomb as if it's the most exciting thing that happened and you think like, This is a pretty ambitious, interesting movie made by interesting people that have talent," Affleck said. He added, "Everybody wants to count the money, what it made, lost, whatever. To me, I just think, if you punish movies that take risks, guess what you are going to get? A bunch of sh*tty homogenised movies. You cannot do something interesting without taking a big swing. That means you are going to sometimes look bad."

Directed by acclaimed filmmaker Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Digger opened to mostly mixed reviews from critics. According to the latest reports, the film is likely to lose around $245 million.