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. Īffleck was raised in a politically active, liberal household. He lived at the facility for twelve years to maintain his sobriety and worked there as an addiction counselor. When Affleck was 16, his father entered a rehabilitation facility in Indio, California. His father continued to drink heavily and eventually became homeless, spending two years living on the streets of Cambridge.
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. ĭuring Affleck's childhood, his father had a self-described "severe, chronic problem with alcoholism", and Affleck has recalled him drinking "all day. In the mid-1960s, he had been an actor and stage manager with the Theater Company of Boston. 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.
His mother, Christopher Anne "Chris" Boldt, was a Harvard-educated elementary school teacher. His family moved to Massachusetts when he was three, living in Falmouth, where his brother Casey was born, before settling in Cambridge.
Affleck gained wider recognition when he and childhood friend Matt Damon won the Golden Globe and Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for writing Good Will Hunting (1997), which they also starred in. He later appeared in the independent coming-of-age comedy Dazed and Confused (1993) and various Kevin Smith films, including Mallrats (1995), Chasing Amy (1997) and Dogma (1999).
He began his career as a child when he starred in the PBS educational series The Voyage of the Mimi (1984, 1988). His accolades include two Academy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards and a Volpi Cup. Benjamin Géza Affleck-Boldt (born August 15, 1972) is an American actor, film director, producer, and screenwriter.