Matt Damon turned down Ben Affleck's role in 'Daredevil'.

The pair have been best friends since they were children and rose to stardom together after writing and appearing in 'Good Will Hunting' and Matt has revealed he was offered the leading role in Ben's 2003 comic-book movie but ultimately ''chickened out''.

He explained: '' For us it was always 'Daredevil' - that's the comic we read when we were kids.

''But when that one came along (in 2003) I chickened out, because I couldn't tell. I hadn't seen the director's work and I didn't know. So I just said, 'No.' Ben was like, 'I gotta do it.' And the movie ended up doing very well, even though I don't think Ben was ultimately very proud of it.''

Matt, 44, also revealed that he never worries about his career tanking because he sees how 43-year-old Ben - who has now landed the role of superhero Batman - bounced back from a series of flops, including his disastrous 'Gigli' with former fiancée Jennifer Lopez.

The 'Martian' star told the New York Daily News newspaper: ''Ben had that whole moment where he was in the crosshairs of (the tabloids) and couldn't really get a job. And he said to me at the time, 'I can sell magazines and not movie tickets, I'm in the worst place to be' ... From there, he wrote and directed his way out of that and into a kind of place that neither of us had been - winning an Academy Award for Best Picture. So that's a good fallback. That mitigates some of the actor insecurity.''