Ben Affleck

Benjamin Géza Affleck (born August 15, 1972) is an American actor and filmmaker. His accolades include two Academy Awards, two BAFTA Awards, and three Golden Globes. Affleck began his career as a child when he starred in the PBS educational series The Voyage of the Mimi (1984–1988). He later appeared in the independent comedy Dazed and Confused (1993) and several Kevin Smith comedies, including Chasing Amy (1997).

Affleck gained wider recognition when he and Matt Damon won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for writing Good Will Hunting (1997), which they also starred in. He established himself as a leading man in studio films, including the disaster film Armageddon (1998), the action crime thriller Reindeer Games (2000), the war drama Pearl Harbor (2001), and the thriller The Sum of All Fears (2002). After a career downturn, Affleck made a comeback by portraying George Reeves in the biopic Hollywoodland (2006), winning the Volpi Cup for Best Actor.

His directorial debut, Gone Baby Gone (2007), which he also co-wrote, was well received. He then directed and starred in the crime drama The Town (2010) and the political thriller Argo (2012), both of which were critical and commercial successes. For the latter, Affleck won the BAFTA Award for Best Director, and the BAFTA and Academy Award for Best Picture. Affleck then starred in the psychological thriller Gone Girl (2014) and played the superhero Batman in the DC Extended Universe (2016–2023). He starred in the thriller The Accountant (2016) and the sports drama The Way Back (2020). Affleck had supporting roles in the dramas The Last Duel (2021), The Tender Bar (2021) and Air (2023), the third of which he also directed.

Affleck is the co-founder of the Eastern Congo Initiative, a grantmaking and advocacy-based nonprofit organization. He is a supporter of the Democratic Party. Affleck and Damon are co-owners of the production company Artists Equity and were also co-owners of Pearl Street Films.

Early life

Affleck was born Benjamin Géza Affleck-Boldt on August 15, 1972, in Berkeley, California. His family moved to Massachusetts when he was three, living in Falmouth, where his brother Casey was born, before settling in Cambridge. His mother, Christopher Anne "Chris" Boldt, was a Harvard-educated elementary school teacher. His father, Timothy Byers Affleck, was an aspiring playwright who was "mostly unemployed". He worked sporadically as a carpenter, auto mechanic, bookie, electrician, bartender, and janitor at Harvard. In the mid-1960s, he had been an actor and stage manager with the Theater Company of Boston.

During Affleck's childhood, his father had a self-described "severe, chronic problem with alcoholism", and Affleck has recalled him drinking "all day ... every day". His father was "very difficult", and Affleck felt a sense of "relief" at the age of 11 when his parents divorced, and his father exited the family home. His father continued to drink heavily and eventually became homeless, spending two years living on the streets of Cambridge. When Affleck was 16, his father entered a rehabilitation facility in Indio, California. He lived at the facility for 12 years to maintain his sobriety and worked there as an addiction counselor.

Affleck was raised in a politically active, liberal household. He and his brother, Casey, were surrounded by people who worked in the arts; the boys regularly attended theater performances with their mother and were encouraged to make their own home movies. David Wheeler, a family friend, later remembered Affleck as a "very bright and intensely curious" child. The brothers auditioned for roles in local commercials and film productions because of their mother's friendship with a Cambridge-area casting director, and Affleck first acted professionally at the age of seven. His mother saved his wages in a college trust fund and hoped her son would ultimately become a teacher, worrying that acting was an insecure and "frivolous" profession. When Affleck was 13, he filmed a children's television program in Mexico. He learned to speak Spanish during a year spent traveling around the country with his mother and brother.

As a Cambridge Rindge and Latin high school student, Affleck acted in theater productions and was inspired by drama teacher Gerry Speca. He became close friends with fellow student Matt Damon, whom he had known since the age of eight. Although Damon was two years older, the pair had "identical interests" and both wanted to pursue acting careers. They traveled to New York together for acting auditions and saved money for train and airline tickets in a joint bank account. While Affleck had high SAT scores, he was largely an unfocused student with poor attendance. He spent a few months studying Spanish at the University of Vermont, chosen because of its proximity to his then-girlfriend, but he left after fracturing his hip while playing basketball. At 18, Affleck moved to Los Angeles, studying Middle Eastern affairs at Occidental College for a year and a half.

Career

1981–1997: Child acting and Good Will Hunting

Affleck acted professionally throughout his childhood but, in his own words, "not in the sense that I had a mom that wanted to take me to Hollywood or a family that wanted to make money from me ... I kind of chanced into something." He first appeared, at the age of seven, in an independent film, The Dark End of the Street (1981), directed by a family friend. His biggest success as a child actor was as the star of the PBS children's series The Voyage of the Mimi (1984) and The Second Voyage of the Mimi (1988), produced for sixth-grade science classes. Affleck worked "sporadically" on Mimi from the age of eight to fifteen in both Massachusetts and Mexico. As a teenager, he appeared in the ABC after school special Wanted: A Perfect Man (1986), the television film Hands of a Stranger (1987), and a 1989 Burger King commercial.

After high school, Affleck moved briefly to New York in search of acting work. Later, while studying at Occidental College in Los Angeles, Affleck directed student films. As an actor, he had a series of "knock-around parts, one to the next". He played Patrick Duffy's son in the television film Daddy (1991), made an uncredited appearance as a basketball player in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer film (1992), and had a supporting role as a prep school student in School Ties (1992). He played a high school quarterback in the NBC television series Against the Grain (1993), and a steroid-abusing high school football player in Body to Die For: The Aaron Henry Story (1994). Affleck's most notable role during this period was as a high school bully in Richard Linklater's cult classic Dazed and Confused (1993). Linklater wanted a likable actor for the villainous role, and, while Affleck was "big and imposing", he was "so smart and full of life ... I just liked him." Affleck later said Linklater was instrumental in demystifying the filmmaking process for him.

Affleck's first starring film role was as an aimless art student in the college drama Glory Daze (1995), with Stephen Holden of The New York Times remarking that his "affably mopey performance finds just the right balance between obnoxious and sad sack". He then played a bully in filmmaker Kevin Smith's comedy Mallrats (1995) and became friends with Smith during the filming. Affleck had begun to worry that he would be relegated to a career of "throwing people into their lockers", but Smith wrote him a lead role in the romantic comedy Chasing Amy (1997). The film was Affleck's breakthrough. Janet Maslin of The New York Times praised Affleck's "wonderful ease" playing the role, combining "suave good looks with cool comic timing". Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly described it as a "wholesome and quick-witted" performance. When Affleck starred as a recently returned Korean War veteran in the coming-of-age drama Going All the Way (1997), Todd McCarthy of Variety found him "excellent", while Janet Maslin of The New York Times noted that his "flair for comic self-doubt made a strong impression."

The success of 1997's Good Will Hunting, which Affleck co-wrote and acted in, marked a turning point in his career. The screenplay originated in 1992 when Damon wrote a 40-page script for a playwriting class at Harvard University. He asked Affleck to act out the scenes with him in front of the class and, when Damon later moved into Affleck's Los Angeles apartment, they began working on the script in earnest. The film, which they wrote mainly during improvisation sessions, was set partly in their hometown of Cambridge and drew from their own experiences. The screenplay was borne of their desire to create "an acting reel" for themselves. They sold the screenplay to Castle Rock in 1994 when Affleck was 22 years old. During the development process, they received notes from industry figures, including Rob Reiner and William Goldman. Following a lengthy dispute with Castle Rock about a suitable director, Affleck and Damon persuaded Miramax to purchase the screenplay. The two friends moved back to Boston for a year before the film finally went into production, directed by Gus Van Sant, and co-starring Damon, Affleck, Minnie Driver, and Robin Williams.