Born on August 15, 1972, Benjamin Géza Affleck is an American actor and director. Among his honors are three Golden Globes, two BAFTA Awards, and two Academy Awards. When Affleck was younger, he starred in the educational PBS series The Voyage of the Mimi (1984, 1988), which launched his career.
Later, he starred in other Kevin Smith movies, including Chasing Amy (1997) and the indie comedy Dazed and Confused (1993).
READ ALSO: Ea Ea_eran Biography, History, Age, Height, Relationships
After he and Matt Damon won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for penning Good Will Hunting (1997), in which they both acted, Affleck became more well-known.
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.
Gone Baby Gone (2007), which Affleck co-wrote, was his directorial debut and garnered positive reviews. Then, in the critically acclaimed and financially successful political thriller Argo (2012) and criminal drama The Town (2010), he both directed and acted.
Affleck received the Academy and BAFTA Awards for Best Picture as well as the BAFTA Award for Best Director for the latter. After that, Affleck portrayed Batman in the DC Extended Universe (2016–2023) and featured in the psychological thriller Gone Girl (2014).
In 2020, he featured in the sports drama The Way Back, and in the thriller The Accountant (2016). In the dramas The Last Duel (2021), The Tender Bar (2021), and Air (2023), which he also directed, Affleck had minor parts.
Affleck is a co-founder of the nonprofit organization Eastern Congo Initiative, which focuses on advocacy and grants. He is a Democratic Party supporter. In addition to being co-owners of Pearl Street Films, Affleck and Damon also co-own the production business Artists Equity.
Early life of Benjamin Géza Affleck
August 15, 1972, in Berkeley, California, saw the birth of Benjamin Géza Affleck-Boldt. His brother Casey was born in Falmouth, Massachusetts, where his family resided until relocating to Cambridge when he was three years old.
With a degree from Harvard, his mother, Christopher Anne “Chris” Boldt, taught elementary education. Timothy Byers Affleck, his father, was “mostly unemployed” yet an ambitious dramatist. In addition to being a janitor at Harvard, he had intermittent jobs as an electrician, carpenter, bookie, and bartender. Actor and stage manager with the Theater Company of Boston, he had worked there since the mid-1960s.
According to Affleck, his father had a “severe, chronic problem with alcoholism” when he was a boy, and he used to drink “all day… every day”. At the age of eleven, Affleck had “relief” at his parents’ divorce and his father’s departure from the family home, since his father was “very difficult”.
His father kept up his heavy drinking until he was left homeless and lived on Cambridge’s streets for two years. His father checked himself into an Indio, California, recovery center when Affleck was sixteen years old. In order to stay sober, he spent twelve years living and working at the institution as an addiction counselor.
