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The following biography
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Benjamin Geza Affleck (born August 15, 1972) is an
American film actor and an Academy Award-winning American screenwriter.
****
Early life
Affleck was born as Benjamin Geza Affleck-Boldt [1]
in Berkeley, California, to Tim Affleck, a social worker, and Chris Boldt, a
school teacher; his younger brother is actor Casey Affleck. Affleck is of
Scottish and English ancestry on his father's side,[2] and has Irish ancestry on
his mother's side. At the age of eight Affleck met Matt Damon (aged ten), who
lived two blocks away in Cambridge, through the encouragement of their parents.
Affleck and Damon would later attend Cambridge Rindge and Latin School together,
although they were in different year groups.
Affleck grew up in the Cambridge, Massachusetts
area and attended Occidental College in Los Angeles, as well as the University
of Vermont.
Career
Affleck worked as a child actor, appearing on the
PBS kids' series The Voyage of the Mimi and in several made-for-television
movies. Throughout the 1990s, Affleck had a role in LifeStories:Families in
Crisis as a steroid abusing athlete as well as several notable films, including
1992's School Ties (with Matt Damon), 1993's Dazed and Confused, 1995's Mallrats
and 1997's Chasing Amy; "Mallrats" and "Amy" began his collaboration with
writer/director Kevin Smith, in whose films he usually appears. Affleck had a
non-speaking role as a high school basketball player in the original Buffy the
Vampire Slayer movie. Affleck and fellow Boston Red Sox fanatic Matt Damon had
roles as extras in the movie Field of Dreams when Kevin Costner and James Earl
Jones go to Fenway Park.
Affleck came to national attention when he and best
friend Matt Damon wrote the screenplay for and starred in Good Will Hunting
(1997). Though it is largely rumored that Damon wrote the initial draft and Ben
just helped edit, they shared credit and both received the Oscar for Best
Original Screenplay. Along with Damon and producers Chris Moore and Sean Bailey,
Affleck founded the production company LivePlanet, through which the four
created the documentary series Project Greenlight, as well as the failed
mystery-hybrid series Push, Nevada amongst other projects.
Following Good Will Hunting, Affleck had starring
roles in many successful movies, including Armageddon, Forces of Nature, Pearl
Harbor, Changing Lanes, The Sum of All Fears and Daredevil, establishing himself
as a Hollywood leading man throughout the early 2000s. However, after the
release of several critically panned, box office flops, including Gigli (2003)
and Surviving Christmas (2004), Affleck's career has waned considerably. He did
not appear in any films released in 2005.
Affleck made what can be considered a major
comeback with the September 2006 release of the critically acclaimed George
Reeves biopic-noir Hollywoodland directed by HBO TV-series veteran Allen
Coulter. His performance was impressive enough that he was awarded the Volpi Cup
for Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival. This is his first major role
considered to be in contention for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Affleck recently completed directing his third film, Gone, Baby, Gone, about two
Boston area detectives investigating a little girl's kidnapping and how it
affects their lives. It is in post-production and scheduled for a February 2007
release.
Private life
Affleck had a high-profile romance with actress
Gwyneth Paltrow in 1998, following her breakup with actor Brad Pitt. In 2002, he
began dating actress/singer Jennifer Lopez, whom he met on the set of Gigli. The
same year, his engagement to Lopez was announced, and the relationship between
the two received a lot of attention by the entertainment media. Both
subsequently lost fans and credibility, probably due in part to the saturation
of Affleck/Lopez interviews and projects, and especially after the notorious
failure of Gigli, which in part was due to the negative publicity which led to
the couple being dubbed "Bennifer". The couple broke up in 2004, both blaming
the media attention.
Affleck subsequently dated his Daredevil co-star,
actress Jennifer Garner, the two were engaged after nine months of seeing each
other. In May 2005, it was announced that Garner was pregnant and the couple
were married on June 29, 2005 on the Caribbean islands of Turks and Caicos.
Garner gave birth to a daughter, Violet Anne Affleck, on December 1, 2005. The
couple currently live in Santa Monica, California and Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Affleck is an avid poker player, regularly entering
local events. He has been tutored by poker professionals Amir Vahedi and Annie
Duke, and won the California State Poker Championship on June 20, 2004, taking
home the first prize of $356,000, which qualified him for the 2004 World Poker
Tour final tournament. Affleck is a Boston Red Sox fan in Red Sox Nation.
Political activism
In the final weeks of 2000 Presidential campaign,
Affleck spent his time passionately promoting the Democratic ticket, supporting
Al Gore and repeatedly delivering a get-out-the-vote plea: "It's very important
to vote. The president will appoint three or four Supreme Court justices."
During the final week of the race, Affleck spoke on
behalf of Gore in California, Florida, and Pennsylvania. During a stop in
Pittsburgh, the star—along with Helen Hunt, Martin Sheen, Rob Reiner and other
actors—spent an hour at a phone bank calling registered Democrats. "People in my
generation have a low voter turnout. One of the reasons that I'm here is to
demonstrate that no matter who you are going to vote for... I think it's
important to get involved and get out and vote," Affleck told reporters. "But
I'm going to tell people to vote for Gore."
On October 28, 2000, Affleck flew with First Lady
(Hillary Clinton) to Ithaca, New York, where he introduced her at a Cornell
University rally. Affleck told the college crowd that Clinton had been
advocating for women and working families since "Rick Lazio was running around
the frat house in his underwear". Lazio, then a Long Island congressman, was
Clinton's Republican opponent.
On November 6, 2000, the final day of the campaign,
Affleck was one of several high-profile celebrities summoned to Miami Beach by
Miramax Films boss Harvey Weinstein for a late-night Gore rally, just hours
before polls opened nationwide. The Gore campaign's last event, a final effort
to energize South Beach voters, did not end until about 1:00AM, but Affleck flew
back to New York that morning and made a surprise live appearance on The Rosie
O'Donnell Show. It was 10:15AM when he made his final public pitch from a
Rockefeller Center studio, noting that he was "a little bit tired... I've been
out getting involved, doing stuff and trying to get people to vote. And that's
why I came by here". Also, "Today is the get-out-the-vote day and...I think this
is the time to get involved, especially the young folks who are here ... I'm
about to go vote," Affleck then said, adding later, "I am personally gonna vote
for Al Gore".
As votes were tallied that night, Affleck told
Salon's Amy Reiter, "I'm nervous this evening, but one of the things that's
exciting to me is the amount of people who voted. No matter who wins, I think
it's a healthy thing for our country that so many voters have come out and
participated in the process. Either way, I think the most important number will
be the turnout". However, as The Smoking Gun later discovered, Affleck himself
did not vote that day.
In the May 2001 issue of GQ, Affleck says, "My
fantasy is that someday I'm independently wealthy enough that I'm not beholden
to anybody, so I can run for Congress on the grounds that everyday people — be
they singers or poets or bankers or lawyers or teachers—should be in
government."
In the March 2003 issue of Vanity Fair, Affleck
again proposes the possibility of a future run for Congress. "I think there's a
real nobility to public service," he told the magazine. "It would be fun to run
on a platform I really believed in, without being beholden to the
win-at-all-costs mentality".
In 2004, Affleck actively campaigned for Democratic
presidential nominee John Kerry. During the first day of the Democratic
Convention, Affleck was featured on Larry King Live with Tucker Carlson and Al
Sharpton. Larry King asked Affleck if he would consider running for office, and
Affleck admitted to contemplating the proposition. Specific attention focused on
whether he would run for Kerry's open Senate seat (as Affleck was from
Massachusetts). He noted that the line between politics and entertainment is
becoming increasingly blurred, as political figures Ronald Reagan, and Arnold
Schwarzenegger, all came from the entertainment business, although all were/are
members of the Republican Party.
He appeared in a print ad with his openly gay
cousin, Jason, in support of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.
Although a Democrat, Affleck has spoken kindly of
George W. Bush as a person in an interview with Bill O'Reilly (July 27,2004),
saying "I had the pleasure of and the honor of meeting the President of the
United States at the Daytona 500. I found him to be a collegial, affable, kind
guy." He went on to say Bush "is a patriot and he’s a man who believes in the
country. He's trying to further an agenda he believes in. I happen to disagree
with most of his policies, but I respect the man."
Selected filmography
Year Title Role Other notes
2006 Clerks II Gawking Guy
Hollywoodland George Reeves
Man about town Jack Giamoro
2005 Elektra Matt Murdock Scene Cut
2004 Surviving Christmas Drew Latham
Jersey Girl Ollie Trinke
2003 Paycheck Michael Jennings
Gigli Larry Gigli
Daredevil Matt Murdock/Daredevil
2002 The Sum of All Fears Jack Ryan
Changing Lanes Gavin Banek
2001 Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back Holden
McNeil/Himself
Pearl Harbor Capt. Rafe McCawley
2000 Bounce Buddy Amaral
Reindeer Games Rudy Duncan
Boiler Room Jim Young
1999 Dogma Bartleby
Forces of Nature Ben Holmes
200 Cigarettes Bartender
1998 Shakespeare in Love Ned Alleyn
Armageddon A.J. Frost
Phantoms Sheriff Bryce Hammond
1997 Good Will Hunting Chuckie Sullivan also writer
Chasing Amy Holden McNeil
Going All the Way Tom "Gunner" Casselman
1995 Mallrats Shannon Hamilton
1993 Dazed and Confused Fred O'Bannion
Anne-Marie Losique
In Quebec, Ben Affleck is notorious for his
interviews with Anne-Marie Losique on cinema television show Box-office. Every
time he is in interview with Losique, Affleck drops into a corny French accent,
comments positively and humorously on Montreal, Quebec, the Quebec nationalist
movement and the differences between Americans and the Quebecois and other
foreigners. He teases Losique to her uncontrollable amusement and acts as if
they are already in a sexual relationship ("All you wanna do is have sex all the
time. You don't wanna talk, you don't wanna hold me..."). One of these segments,
filmed in 2004 during promotion for the movie Jersey Girl, gained substantial
fame as a viral video [3] on internet blogs. [4].
****
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