STEP INTO Mr. Affleck's OFFICE

Since founding a production company with a genuinely radical vision, Ben Affleck has chosen to make films as an executive first, a director second, and an actor third, But can you really just stop being one of the biggest movie stars on earth?

- ZACH BARON

From the window of the conference room at Artists Equity, Ben Affleck's production company, you can see Los Angeles spread out for miles to the south-the ocean to the right, Downtown to the left, birds gently flying over everything in between. It's a Monday in January, not quite two weeks after fires first began to sweep over the city, and the birds are oddly calming: the first few tentative signs of life returning. Affleck-tall, a little rumpled, extending a large mitt of a hand-is as jittery as the rest of us, though largely unscathed, despite reports to the contrary. "I noticed that there's been stories about me," he says, almost apologetically.

"My house burning down and all these various things." His house did not burn down, in fact, nor did the one he rents down the block from that house, though like many, he had to leave for a little while. But he is used to having to clear stuff like this up. "I was thinking to myself that this person's impression"-meaning mine-"of my week is probably formed by three Daily Mail articles that are mostly absurd."