Ben Affleck

Overview

Born
August 15, 1972 · Berkeley, California, USA
Birth name
Benjamin Géza Affleck-Boldt
Nickname
- Ben
Height
6′ 3″ (1.91 m)

Biography

Family

Spouses
Children
Parents
Relatives

Trademarks

Frequently plays arrogant and ruthless characters
Opens his films with narration or title cards
Often works with brother Casey Affleck and friend Matt Damon
His films often feature corrupt but well-meaning law enforcement figures
His films often focus on characters caught in situations out of their depth

Trivia

Received a lifetime ban from playing blackjack at Las Vegas' Hard Rock Casino due to his card counting skills.
He and Matt Damon sold their Good Will Hunting (1997) script for $600,000.
Is known for being a very good impressionist. He usually picks one of his costars while filming a movie and studies them. He displays his impressions on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (1992) almost every time he is a guest. While filming The Sum of All Fears (2002), he chose to study co-star Morgan Freeman. When he showed Morgan his impression on set, it was so accurate Freeman told him, "You ever do that again, I'll kill you".
He won $356,000 by winning the California State Poker Championships in June 2004 - defeating some of the best poker players in the world in the process.
His father was at one time a janitor at Harvard University, the inspiration for Will Hunting's job at MIT in Good Will Hunting (1997).

Quotes

[on the celebrity women the tabloids falsely link him to] Sometimes it's Britney Spears, and sometimes it's Carrie Fisher. I can't tell if I have a Lolita complex or an Oedipus complex.
I feel like fame is wasted on me.
[on tabloid coverage of his life] It feels like being in a soap opera that you were unwittingly cast in and you have no choice about it. I get to watch my life like everyone else and think. "I can't believe they did that". And, for whatever reason, you become less special for movie audiences. It cheapens the brand if you want to look at it in a really crass sense. But I figure it has to go away at some point. Eventually someone will come along and have a sex tape or someone will play grab-ass with some kids and I'll be off page one.
[answering a Chris Matthews question about why Hollywood actors sometimes presume to be sophisticated about politics] Everyone's entitled to express their political beliefs. I don't presume to tell anybody who to vote for. I am comfortable telling people what my opinions are. But you have to look also to the media, where you have a vast majority of the loudest and most influential political voices in America media from people who came from the entertainment world. You have Rush Limbaugh, was a radio disc jockey. Bill O'Reilly came from Inside Edition (1988). Michael Moore's a filmmaker. Al Franken was on Saturday Night Live (1975). The line is increasingly blurred between news and entertainment. Secondarily, the media's also shoving celebrities down our throats all the time. As a person, 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.
[when asked by Chris Matthews what he thought about Whoopi Goldberg's remarks at a John Kerry fund raiser that resulted in her being fired as a spokesman for SlimFast] I wasn't there. I went to the Los Angeles fund raiser. I wasn't in the one in New York. I think when you have somebody -- you know, if you did a rock concert that was a benefit and The Who played their music or The Rolling Stones, you'd expect to get, you know, "Satisfaction" or "My Generation." When you hire Whoopi Goldberg, you're going to get her brand of humor. And I think there is a fine line, and you have to be a little bit mindful. And I, for one, am not going to do any scatological jokes or puns about the president's last name on your show, mostly for that reason. But I also think I expect a different code of behavior maybe from comedians who have made a career with a certain kind of comedy than I do from, oh, say, the Vice President of the United States [referring to Vice President [Dick Cheney, who told Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy to "Go fuck yourself" on the floor of the Senate], who used this vulgar language, you know, to a senator and was sort of unapologetic about it. So I think the Republicans hitting her [Whoopi] too hard for that is a little bit hypocritical.