Who is Casey Affleck? Everything You Need to Know (2024)

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Casey Affleck was born on 12 August 1975, in Falmouth, Massachusetts, USA, to a teacher mother and an auto-mechanic father. His father Christopher Affleck also worked as a part-time bartender, bookie, and electrician. In his younger days, Chris had also been closely associated with the entertainment industry. During the ‘60s, Chris worked as a writer, actor, producer, and director with the ‘Boston Theatre Company.’

Casey and his older brother Ben went through tough times during their childhood as their father was a drunkard. He was a bitter man, who had an unfulfilling art career. When Casey was nine years old, his parents separated. Despite his father’s behavior, Casey later admitted that his father was a massive inspiration as he learned quite a lot from him.

After their parents’ separation, the brothers moved in with their mother and paid weekly visits to their father. Casey learned Spanish during his early teens and shared a great bond with his brother. Although Ben was older, they both had common circle of friends at school and spent much of their time together.

Casey was exposed to acting and theater during his junior high school days; his mother, an ardent art lover, would take him to theatre every now and then. She had many friends from the entertainment industry and most of them worked as actors, musicians, and painters. This got the brothers exposed to the art world during their most receptive years. Eventually, the frequency of their visits to the theatre increased.

Casey wasn’t really interested in an acting career during his early high school days, but began to change his mind after being part of several theatrical productions in high school. His teachers saw his talent and compelled him to pursue a career in acting.

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After completing his high school education, Casey moved to Los Angeles to start his career in acting and stayed there with Matt Damon, who was his childhood friend. The young actors struggled for a period of time and did odd jobs at restaurants. Eventually, Casey starred in ‘To Die For,’ which was a success, but the failure of ‘Race the Sun’ put him in a spot of bother.

Casey got fed up with the lack of opportunities in the film industry and got himself enrolled at the ‘George Washington University’ to study politics.

But he never graduated from the university as the urge to act kept him from focusing on his studies. Eventually, he decided to pursue his dream career relentlessly.

As a teenager, Casey Affleck had already appeared in a TV movie titled ‘Lemon Sky.’ He secured this acting role on the back of his mother’s recommendation. He got his first movie role in the 1995 film ‘To Die For.’

The film was a satirical comedy directed by esteemed filmmaker Gus Van Sant. His portrayal of a psychopathic angry teenager received praises from the critics and Gus Van Sant openly claimed that he had become a fan of Casey, the actor. The film went on to become a hit.

The failure of his second film ‘Race the Sun’ compelled him to quit acting. However, he could not refuse when Gus Van Sant cast him in ‘Good Will Hunting,’ which was written by Casey’s brother Ben Affleck and starred his childhood friend Matt Damon. The film was a huge critical and commercial success and catapulted Casey to fame. However, he was not completely convinced and disappeared from the Hollywood scene when his movie ‘Chasing Amy’ failed to make an impact.

Once out of the university, he continued working in films by taking up minor roles. Thus began a ‘dark’ phase in his life, during which he was part of many unsuccessful films, such as ‘American Pie,’ ‘200 Cigarettes,’ and ‘Drowning Mona.’ In 2001, he worked with director Steven Soderbergh for the film ‘Ocean’s Eleven,’ which revived his career to an extent. The film, starring Brad Pitt and George Clooney, was a big success and earned Casey praises for his role as one of the ‘Mormon Brothers.’

Casey reprised his role in the following two installments of the film series, titled ‘Ocean’s Twelve’ and ‘Ocean’s Thirteen’ respectively.

In 2002, Gus Van continued his collaboration with Casey by casting him in the lead role for the film ‘Gerry,’ which also had Matt Damon playing a pivotal role.

The following few years produced mixed results for Casey, but the year 2007 had a big surprise in store for him. He starred in the drama film ‘The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.’ The Western drama film had Brad Pitt playing the titular role of ‘Jesse James,’ while Casey played the other titular character ‘Robert Ford.’

For his negative character in the film, Casey received nominations for an ‘Academy Award,’ ‘Golden Globe Award,’ and ‘Screen Actors Guild Award’ under the ‘Best Supporting Actor’ category. ‘Robert Ford’ turned out to be the biggest breakthrough role of his career and made Casey a part of Hollywood A-listers.

In 2007, his older brother Ben was going through a tough career period. When Ben thought of trying his hand at direction, Casey supported him and played the lead role in his film ‘Gone Baby Gone.’ The film was a major critical success and a modest box office hit. The critics were astonished after seeing Casey’s performance and called him the ‘new big thing in Hollywood.’

In the 2010 film ‘The Killer Inside Me,’ Casey played the role of a serial killer, which earned him critical success. In 2011, he played a supporting role in the heist comedy film ‘Tower Heist.’ During that time, Casey announced that he was working on his debut directorial venture titled ‘I’m Still Here’ and that he was putting his own money into the making of the film.

In 2014, Affleck played a supporting role in Christopher Nolan’s science fiction epic ‘Interstellar.’ He then went on to play a detective in ‘Triple 9’ and then played an engineer in Disney’s disaster movie ‘The Finest Hour.’

He reached the pinnacle of his career after playing the leading role of an alcoholic loner in the film ‘Manchester by the Sea.’ His performance was termed ‘best in recent memory’ and Casey ended up winning several honors, such as the ‘BAFTA Award’ and an ‘Oscar’ for his performance in the film.

Casey then took a slightly controversial path as he starred in the experimental psychological drama ‘A Ghost Story.’ The film premiered at ‘Sundance Film Festival’ and became one of the attractions of the festival, although it was criticized for being ‘way too slow for a mainstream film.’

Affleck then started concentrating on his directorial career and came up with his film ‘Light of My Life’ in 2019. He also produced the film and played an important role. In the meantime, he also starred in the biographical comedy film ‘The Old Man & the Gun.’

In 2019, it was announced that Casey would produce and act in a film titled ‘The World to Come.’ Directed by Mona Fastvold, the film is slated for a September 2020 release. Meanwhile in October 2019, Casey was cast to play the lead role in Vaughn Stein's film ‘Every Breath You Take.’ The principal photography of the film started in December 2019.

Joaquin Phoenix introduced his sister Summer Phoenix to Casey Affleck in the late-90s and they started dating right away. They got married in 2006 and were blessed with two sons, Atticus and Indiana. In 2015, the couple started talking about their troubled marriage publicly and separated the same year.

Casey said that the split was mutual and that they were still good friends. Soon after that, he started dating actress Floriana Lima and Summer Phoenix filed for divorce in mid-2017. The divorce was finalized in September 2017.

Casey is an animal lover and has been a vegetarian since 1995. He works with PETA for animal rights and is quite vocal about his endeavors.

Casey’s career has been plagued with controversies. He was a known alcoholic and his fans breathed a sigh of relief in 2016 when he announced that he was three years sober. He has also been accused of sexual molestation by a couple of his co-workers.