Ben Affleck

Benjamin Geza Affleck (born August 15, 1972) is an Academy Award-winning American screenwriter and film actor.

Early life

Affleck was born in Berkeley, California to Tim Affleck, a Scottish American social worker, and Chris, an Irish American school teacher; his younger brother is actor Casey Affleck. His father was Protestant and his mother was Catholic, and he was not raised in any religion. 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 roles in 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), for which they won an 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, some of his more recent films, including Gigli (2003) and Surviving Christmas (2004) performed poorly at the box office and have been critically panned.

Affleck did not appear in any films released in 2005, but currently has several films scheduled for 2006 release, including Hollywoodland (playing actor George Reeves), Kevin Smith's Clerks 2, and Joe Carnahan's Narc follow-up, Smokin' Aces. Affleck was originally cast in the role of coach Don Haskins in Glory Road, but dropped out and was replaced by Josh Lucas. He will also appear in a lead role in an independent film from director Mike Binder, Man About Town.

Affleck is currently in Boston directing his first film, Gone, Baby, Gone, based on the Dennis Lehane novel about two Boston area detectives investigating the kidnapping of a young girl.

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 López, whom he met on the set of Gigli. The same year, his engagement to López 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/López 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, (they first met while filming "Pearl Harbor") and 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 lives 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 voted 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, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Rush Limbaugh 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 in support of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.

Selected filmography

Year	Title	Role	Other notes
2005	Elektra	Matt Murdock	Scene Cut
2004	Surviving Christmas	Drew Latham
2004	Jersey Girl	Ollie Trinke
2003	Paycheck	Michael Jennings
	Gigli	Larry Gigli
	Daredevil	Matt Murdock/Daredevil
2002	The Sum of All Fears	Jack Ryan
2002	Changing Lanes	Gavin Banek
2001	Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back	Holden McNeil/Himself
2001	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

References

External links

Interviews

Dark Horizons interview (October 20, 2004)
Dark Horizons interview (December 11, 2003)
About.com interview (December, 2003)
IGN films interview (August 21, 2003)
About.com interview (August, 2003)
Entertainment Tonight interview (June 21, 1998)

Web sites

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