An Academy Award-winner by the age of 25 (Good Will Hunting), an action hero by 26 (Armageddon), a critical target by 31 (Gigli) and a comeback story by 34 (Hollywoodland), Ben Affleck has had his fair share of career peaks and valleys in less than a decade. This week he makes his directorial debut with the taut thriller Gone Baby Gone, a film that just might propel him back into Oscar territory and -- dare we say it? -- into a whole new calling behind the camera.

In Gone Baby Gone, Affleck directs younger brother Casey (also excellent in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford) in a mystery surrounding the case of a missing Boston girl. Though skeptics might have been doubtful, the direction is adept, well-paced, and absorbing; heck, maybe Affleck should do this more often! In the spirit of Total Recall, we decided to take a look at some of the lesser-known roles from way back in the filmography of the man better known to some as Bennifer II.

One of our favorite early Affleck bit roles came in 1992's Buffy the Vampire Slayer (30 percent on the Tomatometer) -- the original flick, not the WB series. Although a young Ben Affleck had already starred in a few telefilms and the Voyage of the Mimi, our first big-screen glimpse of the adolescent Affleck was when he appeared -- nay, starred -- as Basketball Player #10 in the infamous "How funky is your chicken?" scene. When Hemery High Hogs star player Grueller (Sasha Jensen) actualizes his newfound vampire skills to jam slam dunks and terrorize the opposing team, he memorably menaces Affleck into giving up the rock. Minutes later, Buffy hunts him down -- "Grueller, it's me, Buffy! We used to hang! My birthday party, you drank all the blueberry schnapps and looged on my mom?" -- before he's vanquished by a dreamy Luke Perry. Sigh.

Only a few months later, in September of 1992, Affleck fans got another tiny taste of Ben in the 1950s-set anti-anti-Semitism prep school drama School Ties (67 percent), which featured then-big stars like Brendan Fraser, Chris O'Donnell, and Matt Damon. Ties even borrowed a few actors fresh from the Buffy set to round out its gaggle of collegiate eye candy, including Randall Batinkoff, Andrew Lowery, and Affleck himself. The story of a poor Jewish football standout (Fraser) recruited by a Catholic school to win the big game movingly depicted one kid's lonely struggle against rampant societal bigotry, and featured one of the most memorable line-bellowings in movie history ("Cowaaaaards!"). Our favorite School Ties scene? The rousing group rendition of "Smokey Joe's Café." Look for Affleck; he's the shirtless one!

That brings us to another film classic, which arguably boasts Affleck's greatest ever non-lead actor role: soon-to-be super senior Fred O'Bannion, the paddle-happy bully in Dazed and Confused (98 percent), Richard Linklater's 1993 opus of high school life in the 1970s on the last day of school. As new freshmen run for their lives and juniors inherit their campus crowns, many players in the ensemble cast stand out: Parker Posey as the meanest queen bee on campus ("Fry like bacon!"), Matthew McConaughey as the suave older guy still hanging around ("High school girls... I get older, they stay the same age."), and Affleck's O'Bannion, whose dogged efforts to catch young Mitch (Wiley Wiggins) are as successful as the inscription on his paddle is eloquent ("FAH Q").

Alas, those days of Affleck obscurity (read: 1992-3) are over, marred by efforts great (Shakespeare in Love, 93 percent) and not-so-great (Surviving Christmas, seven percent). What we would give for another juicy performance on the scale of O'Bannion! At least for now, Affleck appears to have found himself cast in another well-suited role: director.