movie in London, where part of me would be feeling lost and unsure of myself. By the same token, I didn't want to do Boston again, because I don't want to be typecast as Mr Johnny Boston film-maker. That's limiting, but I liked the challenges this movie presented." Affleck struggled to find anything he wanted to direct after Gone Baby Gone, until producer Graham King approached him with a script based on Chuck Hogan's crime novel Prince of Thieves, set in the Irish-Catholic Boston district of Charlestown, once the bank robbery capital of America. Initially, Affleck intended only to star, but found himself gripped by the tale's amalgam of love story, character study and hardboiled noir. The Town is an altogether brasher, more commercial affair than Gone Baby Gone, and sees him tackling his first major set-piece -- an urban car chase that's part Ronin, part Amores Perros, and a virtual squeal-by-squeal recreation of an actual pursuit that occurred in Boston's North End. Being "the pope of Boston", as he was once dubbed, enabled Affleck to grease the wheels necessary to shut down a historic neighbourhood for his purposes, but the budget wasn't so generous that logistical problems such as rain didn't badly muck up his schedule. Actors claim they get a buzz out of shooting action scenes, but when I ask Affleck if he did as director, he grimaces. "No. It was stressful. It gave me a lot of anxiety, more than anything else." He's also quick to stress