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Biography
Affleck in Reindeer Games
Benjamin Geza Affleck (born August 15, 1972) is an American actor and Oscar-winning screenwriter.
Contents
1 Early life
2 Career
3 Private life
4 Political activism
5 Selected filmography
6 External links
6.1 Interviews
6.2 Web sites
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.
Affleck grew up in the Cambridge, Massachusetts area and attended college in Los Angeles at Occidental College.
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 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 came to national attention when he and best friend Matt Damon (whom he had met while studying at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School) wrote the screenplay for Good Will Hunting (1997), for which they won an Academy Award for Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen. Along with Damon and producer Chris Moore, Affleck founded the production company LivePlanet, through which the three created the documentary series Project Greenlight, as well as the failed mystery-hybrid series Push, Nevada.
Affleck in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back
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) have been critically panned and performed poorly at the box office.
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. He will also appear in a lead role in an independent film from director Mike Binder, Man About Town.
Affleck will soon direct his first film, Gone, Baby, Gone, based on the Dennis Lehane novel about two Boston area detectives investigating the kidnapping of a little 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 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, and the two were engaged to be married after nine months of seeing each other. In May 2005, it was announced that Garner was pregnant [1] and the couple was married on June 29, 2005. Garner gave birth to a baby girl named Violet Anne Affleck on December 1, 2005 [2]. The couple currently live in Santa Monica, California.
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."
Ben Affleck.
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, Bill O'Reilly, and Rush Limbaugh all came from the entertainment business, although all were/are members of the Republican Party.
As of 2005, Affleck has been widely mentioned as a possible Democratic U.S. Senate candidate from Virginia for the 2006 United States Senate race as an opposition for the incumbent, Republican Sen. George Allen.
He appeared in a print ad with his openly gay cousin in support of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.
Selected filmography
Affleck and Gwyneth Paltrow in Bounce
2005
Elektra
Matt Murdock
Scene Cut
2004
Surviving Christmas
Drew Latham
2004
Jersey Girl
Ollie Trinke
2003
Paycheck
Michael Jennings
2003
Gigli
Larry Gigli
2003
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
2000
Reindeer Games
Rudy Duncan
2000
Boiler Room
Jim Young
1999
Dogma
Bartleby
1999
Forces of Nature
Ben Holmes
1999
200 Cigarettes
Bartender
1998
Shakespeare in Love
Ned Alleyn
1998
Armageddon
A.J. Frost
1998
Phantoms
Sheriff Bryce Hammond
1997
Good Will Hunting
Chuckie Sullivan
also writer
1997
Chasing Amy
Holden McNeil
1995
Mallrats
Shannon Hamilton
1993
Dazed and Confused
Fred O'Bannion
