American actor and director Ben Affleck was born on August 15, 1972. He has won a Volpi Cup, three Golden Globe Awards, and two Academy Awards.
The Eastern Congo Initiative is a nonprofit dedicated to grantmaking and activism, and Ben Affleck is one of its co-founders. He is a devoted supporter of the Democratic Party. Pearl Street Films is a production firm that Affleck and Damon jointly operate.
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Table of Contents
Early Life
Ben’s parents, an aspiring playwright and a janitor who also worked as a carpenter and bookie, respectively, raised him in a public school. Ben’s mother was also a teacher. Ben’s younger brother Casey was born here after the family relocated to Falmouth, Massachusetts when he was three years old. The couple ultimately made Cambridge their permanent home, when his parents eventually got divorced.
Ben’s family was quite active in Cambridge’s artistic community. Ben and his brother spent time with artists and went to theater shows from an early age. Both of the Affleck boys’ auditions were set up thanks to his mother’s friendship with a local casting agent. Ben’s mother supported him in his acting, but she never pressured him to pursue acting as a career; instead, she wanted him to become a teacher.
Ben Affleck first met Matt Damon, who was two years older than him, when he was eight years old. The lads connected right away and grew close friends over time. Together, they attended acting school and later started their Hollywood careers.
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His Career
When he was only seven years old, Affleck landed his first professional acting role in a small-budget local movie. Ben appeared in the PBS children’s programs “Voyage of the Mimi” and “Second Voyage of the Mimi” from the ages of 8 to 15, working both in Cambridge and in Mexico. At the ages of 14 and 15, he then had appearances in the television movies “Hands of a Stranger” and the ABC after-school special “Wanted: A Perfect Guy.”
Ben played supporting roles in many films after graduating from Cambridge Rindge and Latin School in 1990, including Daddy (1991), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992), and School Ties (1992). His bulk led to him frequently being portrayed as a bully or jock. In both the HBO drama “Body to Die For: The Aaron Henry Story” and the NBC series “Against the Grain,” he played a football player. Ben subsequently landed a role in the now-famous Richard Linklater movie “Dazed and Confused” as a high school bully. He also appeared in the 1995 drama “School Ties” in a supporting capacity.
Together with his close buddy Matt Damon, Affleck co-wrote and starred in the movie “Good Will Hunting,” which served as his career-launching vehicle for him. The script was originally a 40-page project for Damon’s Harvard University playwriting class; subsequently, when the two were living together in Los Angeles, they collaborated to extend it into a screenplay. They both desired to collaborate on a project where they could make the major decisions because they were both dissatisfied with the minor supporting and background roles they had been given up to that time.
The completed script was given by Affleck and Damon to their agency, who then shopped it around to other studios. In 1994, Castle Rock agreed to release it, but they were not ready to grant Ben and Matt the creative authority they demanded. The men presented the script to Miramax, where they were given more artistic latitude.
Wide-ranging praise from critics for the storyline and acting followed the 1997 publication of “Good Will Hunting.” Due to their outstanding performances in the film, Affleck and Damon became overnight celebrities and were immediately cast in larger roles.
Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez costarred in the critically panned 2003 film Gigli. His career was overshadowed by the extensive tabloid publicity of his engagement to Lopez, which lasted for two years. Affleck kept acting, but it wasn’t until 2006 that he rose to fame again, this time playing the former Superman actor George Reeves in the biography Hollywoodland.
For this part, he received positive reviews and was nominated for a Golden Globe Award. Affleck appeared in three films in 2009: the crime drama State of Play; the workplace satire Extract; and the romantic comedy He’s Just Not That Into You, which also starred Jennifer Aniston.
In the 2010s, Affleck appeared in the corporate downsizing drama The Company Men (2010), Terrence Malick’s impressionistic love story To the Wonder (2012), and the online gambling thriller Runner Runner (2013). Affleck portrayed a guy accused of being responsible for his wife’s disappearance in David Fincher’s gripping Gone Girl, which was adapted from the Gillian Flynn novel, in 2014. Later, he put on superhero garb once more, this time playing the role of Batman in the films Justice League (2017) and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016). An alternative version of the latter movie was released in 2021 as Zack Snyder’s Justice League.
In the thriller The Accountant 2016, Affleck again played a math prodigy who keeps the books for drug cartels and thugs. In the thriller Triple Frontier, a group of former Special Forces members faces a number of moral choices after organizing a sophisticated theft.
Affleck starred in two films in 2020: The Way Back, about an alcoholic who takes on the role of a high-school basketball coach, and The Last Thing He Wanted, a murder drama based on a novel by Joan Didion. In a subsequent Ridley Scott film, The Last Duel, he reteamed with Damon (2021). The historical drama, in which Casey Affleck portrayed a promiscuous count, was based on the true account of a woman who accused a squire (Adam Driver) of rape, leading to a trial by combat between the alleged attacker and her husband (Damon). Along with acting in the movie, Affleck and Damon collaborated with Nicole Holofcener to write the script.
Affleck played a bartender in George Clooney’s drama The Tender Bar, which was based on a memoir by J.R. Moehringer, who develops into a father figure to his nephew. In the thriller Deep Water (2022), which was based on Patricia Highsmith’s book about a man accused of killing his wife’s lovers, Affleck later made an appearance.
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As A Growing Star
Following the success of “Good Will Hunting,” Affleck was in a position to select parts that were more significant and rewarding. In “Armageddon,” one of his earliest notable achievements, he portrayed a blue-collar guy who was sent into space to prevent an asteroid from striking Earth. Ben’s reputation as a rising leading man was solidified by the film’s box office triumph.
Shakespeare in Love, Pearl Harbor, The Sum of All Fears, and Changing Lanes were among the sequels that were similarly popular. However, they weren’t all hits; a few of Affleck’s films received dismal box office results. One such flop was the 2003 film “Daredevil,” which the actor later claimed was the only one he regretted producing.
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Career As A Director
Gone, Baby, Gone, which he directed in 2007, was Affleck’s debut motion picture. The criminal drama, based on Dennis Lehane’s book about two Boston police officers looking for a missing girl, was well-received by critics. In The Town (2010), his subsequent effort behind the camera, he mined similar ground by playing himself as the leader of a group of Boston bank thieves. Argo (2012), based on a true account of a bogus movie production that served as cover for a CIA rescue effort during the Iran hostage crisis, was directed and starred Affleck.
Affleck received a Golden Globe Award for the critically acclaimed drama he directed, and he also received an Academy Award as one of the film’s producers. For Live by Night (2016), a drama set in the Prohibition era that he adapted from a Lehane book, he took the helm once more. Affleck played a gangster and co-starred in the movie.
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Ben Affleck’s Net Worth And Earnings
Ben Affleck net worth is $150 million as a successful American actor, playwright, producer, and director Since the beginning of his acting career, leading man Ben Affleck has demanded high salaries. The sale of the screenplay for “Good Will Hunting” netted him and Matt Damon each $300,000. The actor made $6 million on “Reindeer Games,” compared to just $250,000 on “Pearl Harbor.” He made a cool $10 million for both “Changing Lanes” and “The Sum of All Fears.” Affleck earned $11.5 million from “Daredevil” and $12.5 million from “Gigli,” two films that weren’t particularly popular.
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Personal Life
Several prominent Hollywood figures have been romantically associated with Ben Affleck. From 2002 to 2004, he notably dated Jennifer Lopez, turning her into an overnight sensation in the tabloids. The media was obsessed with “Bennifer,” and photographers trailed the couple everywhere. While both Ben and Jennifer had previously appeared in tabloids, Ben was less accustomed to the continual attention and scrutiny. The increased media attention caused Affleck and Lopez to postpone their 2003 wedding after becoming engaged in 2002. The next year, they split up.
In 2005, Ben wed Jennifer Garner, and the two later had three kids together. Their divorce was finally formalized in late 2018 after they declared their separation in 2015.
Ben received alcoholism treatment in a residential facility in 2001. In 2017 and again in 2018, he came back. After a year of sobriety, he had a public slip-up in 2019, but he determined not to let it stop him from making progress.
Twenty years after their initial meeting, Affleck and Lopez started dating once more in April 2021. In April 2022, they announced their second engagement. On July 16, 2022, they were married in Las Vegas, making Affleck the stepfather of Lopez’s twin daughters, Max, and Emme Muiz.
