Ben Affleck’s parents: Star, 54, shares heartbreaking grief

Ben Affleck spoke publicly for the first time about losing both of his parents within months, reflecting on how their deaths have reshaped his understanding of their lives and sacrifices. On the Sept. 30 episode of Kerry Washington‘s “Street You Grew Up On” podcast, the 54-year-old Oscar winner talked about the grief he has carried since Ben Affleck’s parents died in April and June.

Ben Affleck’s parents were Chris Anne and Timothy Affleck. His mother died June 2 at age 83 after a six-month battle with pancreatic cancer. His father died at 76; Affleck’s brother, Casey Affleck, confirmed his death in early September during a press conference at the Venice International Film Festival, Page Six reported.

“My parents just died, both of them. In April and June,” Ben told Washington, his co-star in the film “Animals.” “So I’ve been just like, you know, not just now or anything, but it’s just sort of a big thing.”

Affleck directed and stars in “Animals,” a kidnapping thriller that arrives on Netflix Oct. 9, according to What’s on Netflix.

He said the loss “caused me to start thinking about my own childhood in ways that have been a little bit different.”

What Ben Affleck’s parents’ deaths revealed

The back-to-back deaths of Ben Affleck’s parents sent the actor back into the family’s past. After Chris Anne’s death, he read letters she had sent her parents as a young woman. They offered a window into a person he realized he had never fully known.

“First off, it’s this young woman, full of life and ambition and dreams,” he said. In the letters, she wrote about wanting to become a teacher and about traveling to Mississippi to join protests. “It was really fascinating,” he said.

What struck him most was that his mother had an entire identity apart from motherhood. “But of course, the thing that struck me was this has nothing to do with me. This woman had her own whole life for 30 years that had zero to do with me,” he said.

The woman in those letters was, in his words, “gorgeous and smart and thoughtful and passionate.” He added, “I just thought this woman’s amazing and she could do anything.”

A lifetime of invisible labor

Affleck said that before reading the letters, all he really knew about his mother was that she “made me and my brother the absolute most important center of her life.” She spent 35 years teaching in public schools before she retired in 2008. “She worked really hard, and she came home and did everything,” he said.

“I’ve certainly learned to sort of even more deeply appreciate my mom and really value and see what she did and what the sacrifice and commitment that she made and how complete it was,” he said.

Affleck admitted he “had taken for granted” how much his mother did for him and Casey, though he suspects that is exactly what she intended.

“Probably in a way that she wants, in a way I want my children to take for granted,” he said. “She did that so thoroughly and effectively over her whole life, that I didn’t even see her in a way as her own whole person apart from me. And it blew me away.”

Family background

Ben Affleck’s parents married in the early 1970s and divorced in 1984, when their sons were preteens. They raised Ben and Casey, who both became actors, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Ben shares three children with his ex-wife, Jennifer Garner: Violet, 20, Seraphina, 17, and Sam, 14. Casey, 51, has two adult sons, Indiana, 22, and Atticus, 18, with his ex-wife, Summer Phoenix.

Reporting from Page Six contributed to this story.