Ben Affleck is an American actor, director, and producer. He has won two Academy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and two Screen Actors Guild Awards. He first gained recognition when he starred in the coming-of-age film Dazed and Confused (1993). He then appeared in the independent drama The Good Will Hunting (1997), for which he co-wrote the screenplay and starred in the lead role. The film was a commercial and critical success and earned him an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.
Affleck has since starred in a variety of films, including the action thriller Armageddon (1998), the romantic comedy Shakespeare in Love (1998), the biographical drama Pearl Harbor (2001), the superhero film Daredevil (2003), the war drama Hollywoodland (2006), the political thriller State of Play (2009), the heist thriller The Town (2010), and the sports drama Argo (2012), which he also directed and produced. He has also appeared in a number of supporting roles, including the drama Gone Baby Gone (2007), the thriller Smokin’ Aces (2007), the comedy-drama Extract (2009), the heist film The Company Men (2010), and the science fiction film The Last Stand (2013).
In 2016, Affleck starred in the action thriller The Accountant, the superhero film Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and the crime drama Live by Night. He will reprise his role as Batman in the upcoming Justice League film.
Table of Contents
1. Early Life and Career
2. Breakthrough with Good Will Hunting
3. Successful Film Career
4. Directorial Debut
5. Recent Work
6. Personal Life
7. Awards and Nominations
8. Filmography
9. Ben Affleck Quotes
1. Early Life and Career
Ben Affleck was born on August 15, 1972, in Berkeley, California. His mother, Chris Anne (née Boldt), is a schoolteacher, and his father, Timothy Byers Affleck, is a social worker; the two are divorced. His younger brother is actor Casey Affleck.
Affleck was raised in the nearby city of Cambridge, Massachusetts. He attended the prestigious Buckingham Browne & Nichols School, where he was classmates with Matt Damon. He later enrolled at Occidental College in Los Angeles but dropped out after one year.
Affleck began his acting career in the early 1990s, appearing in a number of television shows and films. He first gained attention for his role in the coming-of-age film Dazed and Confused (1993). He then appeared in the independent drama The Good Will Hunting (1997), for which he co-wrote the screenplay and starred in the lead role. The film was a commercial and critical success and earned him an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.
2. Breakthrough with Good Will Hunting
Affleck’s breakout role came in the 1997 film Good Will Hunting. He co-wrote the screenplay with Matt Damon and starred in the film as Will Hunting, a genius janitor who is recruited by a professor (played by Robin Williams) to solve complex mathematical equations. The film was a commercial and critical success and earned him an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.
3. Successful Film Career
After the success of Good Will Hunting, Affleck starred in a number of commercially and critically successful films. These include the action thriller Armageddon (1998), the romantic comedy Shakespeare in Love (1998), the biographical drama Pearl Harbor (2001), and the superhero film Daredevil (2003). He also starred in the war drama Hollywoodland (2006), the political thriller State of Play (2009), and the heist thriller The Town (2010). In 2012, he directed and produced the sports drama Argo, which was based on the true story of the rescue of American hostages in Iran. The film was a critical and commercial success and earned him a Golden Globe Award for Best Director.
4. Directorial Debut
In 2007, Affleck made his directorial debut with the crime drama Gone Baby Gone. The film, based on the novel of the same name by Dennis Lehane, starred Casey Affleck and Michelle Monaghan as private investigators who search for a missing four-year-old girl. The film was a critical and commercial success.
5. Recent Work
In 2016, Affleck starred in the action thriller The Accountant, the superhero film Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and the crime drama Live by Night. He will reprise his role as Batman in the upcoming Justice League film.
6. Personal Life
Affleck has been married twice. He first married actress Jennifer Garner in 2005. The couple has three children together: two daughters and a son. They announced their intention to divorce in 2015, and the divorce was finalized in 2018.
Affleck began dating actress Lindsay Shookus in 2017. The couple has one daughter together.
7. Awards and Nominations
Affleck has won two Academy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and two Screen Actors Guild Awards. He has also been nominated for a variety of other awards, including the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, the Critics’ Choice Movie Award for Best Actor, and the Satellite Award for Best Actor.
8. Filmography
Some of Affleck’s notable film credits include:
-Dazed and Confused (1993)
-The Good Will Hunting (1997)
-Armageddon (1998)
-Shakespeare in Love (1998)
-Pearl Harbor (2001)
-Daredevil (2003)
-Hollywoodland (2006)
-State of Play (2009)
-The Town (2010)
-Argo (2012)
-Gone Baby Gone (2007)
-The Accountant (2016)
-Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)
-Live by Night (2016)
-The Last Stand (2013)
-The Company Men (2010)
-Justice League (2017)
Ben Affleck Quotes
“I never really thought of myself as a beefcake kind of guy.” — Ben Affleck
“I’m terrible in the kitchen. I was mostly raised by my mother and she could cook, so I never perfected that skill. If I had to count on my own cooking to survive, I’d probably be thinner.” — Ben Affleck
“I have three women in the house. I get to be wrong three times a day.” — Ben Affleck
“Sometimes I get insecure about being a real director because I look at the great directors, and they have such command. But maybe that keeps me critical of myself. Maybe it keeps me moving forward.” — Ben Affleck
“You know George M. Steinbrenner III is the center of all evil in the universe.” — Ben Affleck
“No matter how much you change, you still got to pay the price for the things you’ve done.” — Ben Affleck
“No actor forgets the times he couldn’t get a job. I think everyone doing this operates from that fear. You don’t want that momentum to stop when you get it.” — Ben Affleck
“A friend of my mom’s was a casting director so, really as kind of a lark, I had a couple of acting jobs that had just enough exposure to give me the option to continue if I wanted to. I followed through with it.” — Ben Affleck
“They say money can’t buy happiness? Look at the smile on my face. Ear to ear, baby!” — Ben Affleck
“Memories, all those little experiences make up the fabric of our lives and on balance, I wouldn’t want to erase any of them, tempting though it may be.” — Ben Affleck
“I like that best as I am so hairy.” — Ben Affleck
“Directing is monumentally complicated and it’s a function of all the time you pay to it. I think it would be great to do a movie I’m not in, I could just eat Fritos and just say, ‘yeah, it’s good!’ Some day.” — Ben Affleck
“I’m not the type of guy who enjoys one-night stands. It leaves me feeling very empty and cynical. It’s not even fun sexually. I need to feel something for the woman and entertain the vain hope that it may lead to a relationship.” — Ben Affleck
“Affleck was the bomb in Phantoms.” — Ben Affleck
“Its not who you love. Its how.” — Ben Affleck
“I kinda see my current position like this: Here’s your five minutes in the toy store, so you gotta do all the good movies you can before ‘Chuck Woolery’ rings the bell.” — Ben Affleck
“I’m much more interested in what an actor has to say about something substantial and important than who they’re dating or what clothes they’re wearing or some other asinine, insignificant aspect of their life.” — Ben Affleck
“There’s a lot of noise in the world, and the internet magnifies that energy.” — Ben Affleck
“People decided that I was the frat guy, even though I’ve never been inside a fraternity, or the guy who beat them up at school, even though that wasn’t me at all.” — Ben Affleck
“If you want to be able to use the powers of Flash and Wonder Woman and Cyborg, you have to have bad guys who are up to snuff and give them what they can really kind of get their cars out on the track and open up the accelerator a little bit.” — Ben Affleck
“The best cure for a hangover is something one straight man can’t do for another straight man.” — Ben Affleck
“Anybody tells you that money is the root of all evil doesn’t have any.” — Ben Affleck
“I’ve seen high and lows. When things go well that doesn’t make me feel like some genius. Nor will I allow the next disappointment to make me feel like a complete failure.” — Ben Affleck
“I simply asked if I could have a go at adapting a screenplay. But I did not want any money, in case I failed because I did not want a script out there with my name on it that might be completely dysfunctional.” — Ben Affleck
“I grew up in a home environment where I wasn’t getting esteem for anything I did.” — Ben Affleck
“I have a promptness problem. I am a promptness-free zone.” — Ben Affleck
“I like the incongruity of how in Iran, these people we think of as being revolutionaries or fanatics or whatever are just as aware of Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader as our people are back home.” — Ben Affleck
“I recognize that Hollywood is not about seniority. Often it’s not even a meritocracy. It’s about what you did yesterday. You have a couple of misses, and suddenly it’s impossible to find a hit. So the swings are gigantic. But I’ve always understood it as such, and navigated it as such.” — Ben Affleck
“It doesn’t matter how you get knocked down in life, because that’s going to happen. All that matters is that you gotta get up.” — Ben Affleck
“After 2000 or so, I started to realize I wanted to be doing something else. I didn’t want to be in front of a camera. I was frustrated. I didn’t think I would stop acting, but I didn’t want to be seen.” — Ben Affleck
“I don’t want to jump off the roof or jump for joy depending on my movie reviews, or whether it makes money. I think the larger, more meaningful things are family and the people you love.” — Ben Affleck
“You wasted $150,000 on an education you could have got for a buck fifty in late charges at the public library.” — Ben Affleck
“Well I’ve never used that phrase before, but yes she is bootylicious.” — Ben Affleck
“You get old, you slow down.” — Ben Affleck
“A lot of my shows in the past have been more theatrical than others, but you really get the bug for it when you direct on stage.” — Ben Affleck
“Yes, I’m going to be the President of the United States. You know why? You think you can get chicks by being in the movies? You can really get chicks by being the President.” — Ben Affleck
“I think we all like to see ourselves as good dads, but there’s also that fear, ‘Oh, I don’t want to be like my father,’ or, ‘I hope my kid doesn’t turn out like me.’ You know, I have those feelings too. So the key is optimism.” — Ben Affleck
“Sometimes the people we meet change us forever.” — Ben Affleck
“I want to thank my wife who I don’t normally usually associate with Iran. I want to thank you for working on our marriage for 10 Christmases. It’s good. It is work, but it’s the best kind of work, and there’s no one I’d rather work with!” — Ben Affleck
“You have to be kind to people. Treat them decently. There’s no excuse for not.” — Ben Affleck
“No matter what you’re doing, if you’re trying to make a movie, you need to be working with people that are really good and who make you better.” — Ben Affleck
“My mother went to Radcliffe, and rather than just trying to get rich, she wanted to be a teacher and taught for over 30 years in public schools. She’s definitely got some war stories.” — Ben Affleck
“A sale is made on every call you make. Either you sell the client some stock or he sells you a reason he can’t. Either way, a sale is made, the only question is: Who is gonna close?” — Ben Affleck
“People ascribe a certain kind of silliness to the movie business. Everybody feels like, “In the movies, they do crazy stuff.” — Ben Affleck
“One of the things it channeled in me was that experience that I’d had of wearing a big red leather thing on my upper torso in Daredevil with a mask I couldn’t see through and an outfit that completely inhibited movement, feeling humiliated and like a fool. I just recalled that.” — Ben Affleck
“There are two things for a marriage to be good. One is to work hard on it. The other one is to marry above you. And I succeeded at both of those.” — Ben Affleck
“When you hire great actors, you’re lucky, so you just try to create an atmosphere where they can succeed and relax and take risks. You’re happy that you get to watch them at the monitor and that your name is on the director’s chair.” — Ben Affleck
“On the day he had colonic irrigation: ‘I feel I lost my virginity that day in so many ways.’” — Ben Affleck
“There is nothing worse that a thirteen-year-old boy. You’re embarrassed by your parents, and you’re trying to find your independence because, deep inside, you are so dependent on your mom.” — Ben Affleck
“But when I felt like I had something to prove? Then I got up early every morning and worked all day long. I didn’t know if I had any more talent than anyone else directing, but I knew I could work hard at it, and so I did.” — Ben Affleck
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