Ben Affleck - Ben Affleck visited CIA for Argo research

Ben Affleck visited CIA for Argo research

Ben Affleck visited the CIA as research for 'Argo'.

The 40-year-old actor and director undertook extensive investigations for his Academy Award-nominated film - which follows the real-life story of US diplomats taken hostage in 1979 Iran - and wanted to ensure his dramatisation remained accurate to true accounts by meeting the CIA agent he plays in the film.

He explained: ''I really liked the idea that it was a true story. I did a ton of reading and a ton of interviewing. I went to the CIA, I read all the books.

''I spent time with [CIA agent] Tony Mendez and for the first-person accounts of this, then I did a lot of researching with hostages.''

Ben - who scooped Best Director at the Golden Globes and BAFTAs earlier this month, where he also took home Best Picture - altered the facts slightly and made it so the hostages headed for the Canadian embassy instead of America.

However, Ben had no intentions of insulting the New Zealand and British diplomats involved and wanted viewers to see it as the victims having no choice as to where they went.

He continued to The Sun newspaper: ''That touches on one of the things that I struggled with long and hard, because it cast Britain and New Zealand in a way that was probably not totally fair.

''But I was trying to set up a situation where you got the sense that they had nowhere else to go, rather than get into the complication that they wanted to go here or there.''

'Argo' is the hotly tipped favourite to win Best Picture at the Oscars on Sunday (24.02.13).