Full Name: Benjamin Geza Affleck
DOB: August 15, 1972.
Born to: Tim (father, former actor turned counselor) and Chris (mother, school teacher)
Birthplace: Berkeley, CA
Siblings: Casey (brother, actor)
Likes: Camel Lights, Diet Cokes
Dislikes: flying, said to be aviophobic
On August 15th of 1972 in Berkeley, California an actor was born. Though it's rare a newborn knows what he or she wants to do for the rest of his or her life right at birth, it was literally in his genes that Ben, born to father Tim and mother Chris Affleck, would be end up in the entertainment business.
Tim Affleck was an actor. He worked with and knew many greats such as Blythe Danner and Dustin Hoffman with whom he also lived and had wild nights partying and chasing women together. So, it was only natural that Tim's children would want to follow in their his footsteps.
Raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Ben found periodic work with bit tv and film roles, and Burger King commercials starting at a very young age. When Ben was 8, he landed his first steady job with the PBS television show The Voyages of the Mimi. This series made it a family affair as Ben's younger brother, Casey, was also in one episode. After the Voyage ended, he went on to appear in several tv movies including the 1987 NBC mini-series, Hands of a Stranger.
Another milestone was set when Ben was 8 years old. He met his best friend and sometimes business partner, Matt Damon. The two played Little League together and eventually took drama classes at Cambridge's Rindge and Latin high school together as well and were part of a group that won a Boston Globe drama award with guidance and help from drama teacher, Gerry Specca, with whom Ben still corresponds.
ome years were rougher than others for Ben, but he found solice in acting with minor roles in an NBC series called Against the Grain and another series, this one for HBO, entitled Body to Die For: the Aarom Henry Story.
His feature film debut came when Robert Rodriguez was looking for a villian type high school kid for his Austin based movie, Dazed and Confused. The cast of Dazed and Confusedalso included Matthew McConaughey (A Time to Kill, Contact, Amistad) with whom Ben is still good friends with, Milla Jovovich (Return of the Blue Lagoon, The Fifth Element), Joey Lauren Adams (Mallrats, Chasing Amy), and Jeremy London (Party of Five).
Ben describes his days of filming Dazed and Confused as fun ones. Kids his age drinking, smoking, just having a blast, but those days would come to an end. After Dazed and Confused wrapped up he joined the cast of School Ties which included good friends, Matt Damon, Cole Hauser, Brendan Fraser, and Robin himself, Chris O'Donnell. Though School Ties was a success, most of the fame went to leading male, Brendan Fraser.
Looking for work again, Ben took another route totally different from that of the mainstream. He went Indie. That's the route of Independant Films. Little did Ben Affleck know how much Independant Films would impact his career as well as his life, all of which eventually earned him the title of Indie King.
At the 1997 Sundance Film Festival, founded by the legendary Robert Redford, Ben made his cinematic debut with Mark Pellington's Going All the Way in which Affleck played a jockish GI returning from the Korean war and ready to live life and have fun.
Next, in Kevin Smith's Mallrats, Ben plays manager of "Fashionably Male," an upscale men's store in the mall and Shannon Doherty of Beverly Hills, 90210 fame plays the girl he temporarily steals from Jason Lee's character, Brodie.
While filming Mallrats, director, Kevin Smith, took such a liking to Ben Affleck that he decided to write a movie with Ben in mind for the lead role. That role was Holden of the critically acclaimed Chasing Amy in which Ben plays a charming and witty cartoonist who falls for a girl named Alyssa (played by Joey Lauren Adams, also of Mallrats).
With these two movies on his belt, the Sundance Film Festival and the Independant Film Industry began to pay more attention to Ben's work and realized his talent. It was the success of these films that brought recognition to Ben and started the ball rolling into the direction of ever after.
After Chasing Amy, things got frustrating, work grew scarce. Ben was living in an apartment with Casey and Matt and his only daily source of activity and work came from cleaning up after Matty.
Matt had started writing a screenplay for his english class at Harvard, but put it on the shelves until he was ready to write the rest. Reaching the point where both actors were fed up with reading only scripts that had been passed down by half a dozen other actors, they decided to make their parts, write their own movie, tell their own story. They pulled the unfinished screenplay and started writing, writing, and writing.
Matt would stand in the middle of a room and ramdomly spurt things out that came into his head. Ben and Matt would quipp back and forth, back and forth while Ben typed up ideas for the screenplay. Eventually they finished up the script and were hoping they could make a low-budget film out of it one day.
Chris Moore, their friend and producer (also credited for 'GWH') was the first to believe in the project and agreed to still make the film for $1 million if a studio wouldn't purchase it. Their agent, Patrick Whitesell, also helped a great deal by passing the screenplay around the Hollywood circuit. After years and years of writing the screenplay, the next four days would seem an eternity as they waited to see if anything would happen.
It's been said that luck is when preparation meets opportunity. Throw in the right time and the right place and you've got the winning lottery ticket ingredients for Matt and Ben's long awaited success. Castle Rock had initially bought the rights to the film, but weren't going to allow Ben and Matt as much control over the piece as they wanted, so leave it to good friend and savior, Kevin Smith to take matters into his own hands. Smith took the screenplay to the head honcho at Miramax, Harvey Weinstein, and as they say: 'The rest is history.'
All the hard work and all the struggling to pull through the tough times had finally paid off. The boys hadn't even won an award yet and the thought of even getting nominated for an Oscar had never crossed their minds, but they still felt like they had reached success. Winning to them meant seeing what they had put their hearts into finally become a reality. It took five long years from the time Good Will Hunting was written and sold to getting it filmed and ready for release.
As stated before, it had to have been exactly the right time. After they had filmed Good Will Hunting, still no one had heard of the two actors because the film had yet to be released, but they were cast in two of the biggest movies of this year (besides their own) in Armageddon and Saving Private Ryan. Then GWH came out and Hollywood was taken by storm.
Now Ben's schedule is so tightly booked that he hardly has time to breathe. Every director wants him in their movies and every studio wants him writing their screenplays. Loyal to those that have been loyal to him, Ben (and Matt) recently signed a multi-year first look deal with Miramax Films and will be writing at least two more screenplays with Matt Damon. What may have seemed like an overnight success to the public was actually nearly two decades of long, hard, and genuine work by Ben Affleck.
One academy award and one shiny gold Oscar later, Ben's sitting on top of the world and being on top of the world has its many advantages. Just ask Ben's travelling masseuse. But, however great the perks and however expensive the clothes, nothing impresses Ben more than good writing and hard work; two things he's not willing to sellout.
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