Background

Ethnicity: Affleck is of English, Irish, German, Scottish, Scots-Irish/Northern Irish, distant French and Swiss-German, remote Swedish and Welsh descent. Affleck's maternal great-great grandfather, Heinrich Boldt, -known for the discovery of the Curmsun Disc, emigrated from Prussia in the late 1840s.

Caleb Casey McGuire Affleck-Boldt was born on August 12, 1975, in Falmouth, Massachusetts, the United States, to a teacher mother and an auto-mechanic father. His father, Timothy Byers Affleck, also worked as a part-time bartender, bookie, and electrician, while in his younger days he had been closely associated with the entertainment industry. During the 60s, his mother, Chris worked as an esteemed writer, actor, producer and director with the Boston Theatre Company.

Growing up in a politically active, liberal household in Central Square, Cambridge, Affleck, and his brother were surrounded by people who worked in the arts, were regularly taken to the theater by their mother, and were encouraged to make their own home movies.

Casey and his older brother Ben, who is also a well-known actor, went through tough times during their childhood as their father was a drunkard. He was a bitter man, who had an unfulfilling art career, and when Casey was 9 years old, their parents got separated. But Casey later admitted that his father has been a massive inspiration for him as he learned quite a lot from him.

After their parents’ separation, the brothers moved in with their mother and paid weekly visits to their father. Casey learned Spanish during his early teens and both the brothers shared a great bond. Although Ben was older, they both had the same set of friends at school and spent much of their time together. When Affleck was 14, his father moved to Indio, California to enter a rehabilitation facility, and later worked there as an addiction counselor.

Casey was raised in Cambridge, along with Ben, by his mother. The two siblings spent "all of our time together, pretty much. Obviously, at school, we were in different grades, but we had the same friends."

Education

Casey’s training in acting started during his junior high school days as his mother, an ardent art lover, would take him to the theatre every now and then. Her friends were from the same field and ranged from actors to musicians to painters. This got both the brothers exposed to the art world during their most receptive years, and their visits to the theatre increased eventually.

Casey wasn’t really interested in an acting career during his early high school years but began to change his mind after being part of several theatrical productions in high school. The teachers saw the talent in him and further compelled him to pursue a career in acting.

Like Ben and their childhood buddy Matt Damon, Casey was inspired by his school's acting teacher, Gerry Speca. Affleck recalled: "I was lucky. I had a teacher who encouraged me. Anybody who walked into his class wanted to be an actor, he just turned them on to the beauty of it. I owe him everything."

Casey acted in numerous high school theater productions while a student at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School. Once out of his high school, Casey moved to Los Angeles to start his career in acting and stayed there with Matt Damon.

Despite having "the best possible first experience" while filming To Die For, he spent much of the year working as a busboy at a restaurant in Pasadena. He decided to move to Washington, D.C., to study politics at George Washington University. He soon transferred to Columbia University in New York City, where he followed the core curriculum for a total of two years. However, he did not graduate: "I would do a semester of school, go do a movie ... Opportunities kept presenting themselves that were hard for me to turn down ... By then, I didn't really have roots at the school or a group of friends."

Career

As a teenager, Casey Affleck had already appeared in a TV movie titled Lemon Sky. He secured this acting role at the back of his mother’s recommendation. He got his first movie role in the 1995 film, To Die For.

The film was a satirical comedy directed by esteemed filmmaker Gus Van Sant and was a success. His portrayal of a psychopathic angry teenager received praise from the critics and Gus Van Sant openly claimed that he had become a fan of Casey, the actor.

The failure of his second film Race the Sun compelled him to quit acting, but when Gus Van Sant contacted him for Good Will Hunting, which was written by Casey’s brother Ben Affleck and starred his childhood friend Matt Damon, he couldn’t say no. The film was a mega critical and commercial success and provided Casey with great exposure to the industry. But he didn’t seem much interested in that and after another failed movie, Chasing Amy he disappeared from the Hollywood scene once again.

Once out of the University, he continued working in films in smaller roles and thus began a ‘dark’ period of his life, infested with failed films such as American Pie, 200 Cigarettes and Drowning Mona. In 2001, his stint with director Steven Soderbergh for the film Ocean’s Eleven redeemed him a bit. The film, starring Brad Pitt and George Clooney, was a big success and earned Casey praises for his role as one of the Mormon Brothers.

Casey became a regular part of the cast and reprised his role in the following two installments of the series, titled Ocean’s Twelve and Ocean’s Thirteen.

In 2002, Gus Van continued his collaboration with Casey and cast him in the lead role in the film Gerry, which also had Matt Damon playing a pivotal role.

The following few years produced mixed results for Casey as an actor, but the year 2007 came with a big surprise. He starred in the drama film The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. The Western drama film had Brad Pitt playing the titular role of Jesse James, while Casey played the other titular character, Robert Ford.

Casey auditioned for the role many times and in the end, it all paid off well. For his negative character in the film, Casey received nominations for an Academy Award, Golden Globe Award, and Screen Actors Guild Award as the Best Supporting Actor. This was the biggest breakthrough role of his career and placed Casey in the list of Hollywood A-listers.

In 2007, when his older brother Ben was going through a tough career period and when he was starting a new inning as a director, Casey supported him and played the lead role in his film Gone Baby Gone. The film was a major critical success and a modest box office hit. The critics were astonished after seeing Casey’s performance and termed him as the ‘new big thing in Hollywood’.

In the 2010 film The Killer Inside Me, Casey played the role of a serial killer which got him critical success, and in 2011, he played a side role in the heist comedy film Tower Heist. During that time, Casey announced that he was working on his debut directorial venture titled

I’m Still Here and was putting his own money into the making.

In 2014, Affleck played a supporting role in Christopher Nolan’s science fiction epic Interstellar. He then went on playing a detective in Triple 9 and played an engineer in Disney’s disaster movie The Finest Hour.

But he reached the absolute high of his career after playing the leading role of an alcoholic loner in the film, Manchester by the Sea. His performance was termed as ‘best in the recent memory’ and Affleck ended up winning several honors, such as a BAFTA Award and an Oscar Award for his performance in the film.

Casey then took a slightly controversial path as he starred in the experimental psychological drama, A Ghost Story. The film premiered at Sundance Film Festival and although it was somewhat criticized for being ‘way too slow for a mainstream film’, it became one of the attractions in the festival.

In 2019, he directed, wrote and starred in the survival drama Light of My Life. It had its world premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival on February 8, 2019, and received positive reviews from film critics. Affleck will next star in The Friend, opposite Dakota Johnson and Jason Segel, directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite, based upon a true story revolving around a couple, whose best friend moves in for support, following a cancer diagnosis.

Achievements

• Affleck's breakthrough was in 2007 when he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in the Western drama The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and acted in the crime drama Gone Baby Gone, directed by his brother Ben Affleck. In 2010, he directed the mockumentary I'm Still Here. He then had a string of successful films in the early 2010s, with Tower Heist, ParaNorman, and Interstellar, and received particular praise for his performance as an outlaw in the indie film Ain't Them Bodies Saints.
  
  In 2016, Affleck starred as the lead in the drama film Manchester by the Sea. For his performance as Lee Chandler, a man grieving the loss of his children, he won the Golden Globe, BAFTA and Academy Award for Best Actor, and received a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination. In 2017, Affleck received critical acclaim for his leading role in the supernatural drama film A Ghost Story.

Works

More photos

• movie

  • Interstellar

    (From director Christopher Nolan (Inception) comes the sto...)

  • Chasing Amy

    (Cult comic-book artist Holden (Ben Affleck) falls in love...)

    1997
  • A Ghost Story

    (A recently deceased, white-sheeted ghost (Casey Affleck) ...)

    2017
  • The Killer Inside Me

    (Based on the classic novel by legendary pulp writer Jim T...)

    2010
  • Drowning Mona

    (When the most-hated woman (Bette Midler) in Verplanck, Ne...)

    2000
  • Ain't Them Bodies Saints

    (Casey Affleck & Rooney Mara star in this critically-accla...)

    2013
  • American Pie 2

    (This uninhibited Unrated edition of American Pie 2 hooks ...)

    2001
  • Paranorman

    (From the makers of Coraline comes the magically thrilling...)

    2012
  • Race The Sun

    (Based on a true story, Race The Sun tells the story of an...)

    1996
  • American Pie

    (In this wild Unrated version of the hit comedy, follow th...)

    1999
  • Tower Heist

    (Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy lead an all-star cast in Tow...)

    2011
  • Out of the Furnace

    (From Scott Cooper, the critically-acclaimed writer, and d...)

    2013
  • Ocean's Twelve

    (From Academy Award-winning director Steven Soderbergh ("T...)

    2004
  • Gone Baby Gone

    (The disappearance of a little girl in a gritty Boston nei...)

    2007
  • Hamlet

    (Ethan Hawke is joined by Julia Stiles and Bill Murray in ...)

    2000
  • The Last Kiss

    (The Last Kiss is a contemporary comedy-drama about life, ...)

    2006
  • Desert Blue

    (When cable TV starlet Skye gets stuck in a tiny Californi...)

    1998
  • To Die For

    (Nicole Kidman is astounding as a newswoman dead-set on ma...)

    1995
  • Good Will Hunting

    (Will Hunting, a janitor at MIT, has a gift for mathematic...)

    1997
  • The Old Man & The Gun

    (Robert Redford stars as a gentlemanly geriatric bank robb...)

    2018
  • Triple 9

    (A rookie cop finds himself in the middle of a deadly heis...)

    2016
  • Floating

    (A young man's struggle to come of age during a violent pe...)

    1999
  • Manchester By The Sea

    (Academy Award Winner for Best Actor (Casey Affleck) and B...)

    2016
  • Lemon Sky

    (A man's teen-age son copes with a stepmother, two stepbro...)

    1988
  • Lonesome Jim

    (Steve Buscemi's comedy follows Jim as he returns to life ...)

    2005
  • The Finest Hours

    (When a massive winter storm traps more than 30 sailors on...)

    2016
  • Light of My Life

    (Casey Affleck and Elisabeth Moss star in this edge-of-you...)

    2019
  • Committed

    (A young woman goes in search of her midlife crisis suffer...)

    2000
  • 200 Cigarettes

    (The film follows various plot arcs all occurring on New Y...)

    1999
  • Soul Survivors

    (A co-ed is caught between the world of the living and the...)

    2001
  • The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford

    (Everyone in 1880s America knows Jesse James. He's the nat...)

    2007
  • Ocean's Eleven

    (Danny Ocean likes his chances. All he asks is that his ha...)

    2001
  • Unity

    (A study in the duality of man. Even after thousands and t...)

    2015
  • Ocean's Thirteen

    (It's bolder. Riskier. The most dazzling heist yet. Double...)

Politics

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Affleck supported Hillary Clinton and characterized Donald Trump as "a dangerous fool." In 2017, multiple financial contributions to Trump were made by Affleck's production company, which he co-founded with John Powers Middleton. In a statement, Affleck denied involvement: "I had no knowledge of it, was never asked, and never would have authorized it ... The policies of the Trump administration and the values they represent are antithetical to everything I believe in."

Views

Affleck has been a vegan since 1995. He has been involved with animal rights campaigns for both PETA and Farm Sanctuary.

In 2017, Affleck supported the 37th Annual National Veterans Wheelchair Games hosted by Paralyzed Veterans of America. In January 2019, he attended the 4th Annual Veterans Awards as a presenter.

Quotations: "I believe veganism can be beneficial for the individual and the world, and of course the animal, but belief is like laying in the dark with someone and telling them you love them and hearing nothing back. So I've never had the confidence to get on a soapbox and tell someone else what to do."

"All cultures are different. Some commit genocide. Some are uniquely peaceful. Some frequent bathhouses in groups. Some don't show each other the soles of their shoes or like pictures taken of them. Some have enormous hunting festivals or annual stretches when nobody speaks. Some don't use electricity."

"We obsess about celebrities. We create them, build myths around them, and then hunt them and destroy them. I don't know where it's taking us or what it means, but I know we do it. I have seen a lot of it myself."

"I love getting ready to do a scene, and thinking about it, and talking about it. But the rest of the time, I'm so nervous and obsessed. I'm just tearing my hair out in the trailer. The whole time I'm really tense."

Personality

In a 2016 interview, Affleck said that he had been sober for "almost three years ... My father was a disaster of a drinker, my grandmother was an alcoholic, my brother spent some time in rehab - it's in our genes."

In 2010, two of his former co-workers from I'm Still Here filed civil lawsuits against Affleck. Amanda White, one of the film's producers, sued Affleck for $2 million with multiple complaints including "sexual harassment" and "breach of oral contract". Affleck denied the allegations and threatened to countersue; his lawyer described both claims as "total fiction" and "completely fabricated."

Affleck addressed the allegations when speaking to The New York Times in 2016; he stated: "It was settled to the satisfaction of all. I was hurt and upset - I am sure all were - but I am over it. It was an unfortunate situation - mostly for the innocent bystanders of the families of those involved." Responding to some of the ongoing criticism he faced, Affleck said, "There's really nothing I can do about it. Other than live my life the way I know I live it and to speak to what my own values are and how I try to live by them all the time." Affleck pulled out of presenting the Best Actress Oscar at the 2018 ceremony.

Interests

• Politicians

  Hillary Clinton

• Sport & Clubs

  basketball

Connections

Affleck was introduced to actress Summer Phoenix by her brother, Joaquin, in the mid-1990s. They began dating in 1999 and acted together in both the 2000 film Committed and a 2002 stage production of This is Our Youth. The couple became engaged in January 2004 and married on June 3, 2006, in Savannah, Georgia. They have two sons, Indiana August (b. May 2004) and Atticus (b. January 2008). By early 2015, they had privately separated. They publicly announced their separation in March 2016. Affleck later said: "She's the best. We're very good friends and I love her." On August 1, 2017, Phoenix officially filed for divorce, citing "irreconcilable differences", and it was finalized later that year. In 2016, he began a relationship with actress Floriana Lima.

Father:

Timothy Byers Affleck

Mother:

Christopher Anne Affleck

colleague:

Jessica Chastain

Brother:

Ben Affleck

brother-in-law:

River Phoenix

ex-wife:

Summer Phoenix

Son:

Indiana August Affleck Affleck

Son:

Atticus Affleck

girlfriend:

Floriana Lima

Friend:

Matt Damon

Casey and Ben Affleck have been friends with Matt Damon since childhood.

colleague:

Kevin Bacon

colleague:

Nicole Kidman

colleague:

Brad Pitt

colleague:

Anne Hathaway

colleague:

Michelle Williams

colleague:

Chris Pine

colleague:

Elisabeth Moss

colleague:

Danny Glover

References

• Casey Affleck