Ben and Casey Affleck's mother, Chris, dies at 83 following pancreatic cancer
Chris Anne Affleck, mother of actors Ben and Casey Affleck, died on June 2 after pancreatic cancer. Her final wish to see her grandson Atticus graduate was fulfilled two days earlier.
Chris Anne Affleck, the mother of actors Ben Affleck and Casey Affleck, has died at the age of 83. She died on June 2 after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in December.
An obituary shared by The Hollywood Reporter said Chris had been given six months to live following her diagnosis. It also said her final wish was to see her grandson Atticus graduate from high school.
That wish was fulfilled two days before her death. Chris Anne Affleck is survived in public memory as the mother of Ben and Casey Affleck, and her death follows her pancreatic cancer diagnosis late last year.
Chris was born Christopher Anne Boldt in New York City in December 1942. A Harvard graduate, she spent 35 years as a public school teacher before retiring in 2008.
Influenced by her stepfather, Sam, she was also a committed civil rights activist throughout her life, and taught literacy classes in Mississippi as part of the Freedom Summer campaign in 1964, per her obituary.
Chris shared two sons with her former husband, Timothy Affleck—Ben, now 53, and Casey, 50. The couple split when Ben was roughly 12 years old. Deeply invested in her sons' artistic paths from the start, Chris even gave Ben his first real break in acting by connecting him with casting director Patty Collins, a former college roommate from her Harvard days.
Speaking to Parade in 2007, Ben recalled getting his start almost by accident, explaining that a friend of his mother happened to be a casting director. He noted that the initial roles gave him just enough momentum to pursue the craft seriously.
Casey echoed that sentiment a year earlier in Boston Magazine, highlighting how instrumentally supportive their mother had been as they were finding their feet in the industry.
Chris attended the 1998 Oscars alongside Ben and Matt Damon, who also brought his mother along, after the duo was nominated for Good Will Hunting.
Ben, in an interview with Vanity Fair in 2023 said, "We were sitting next to our moms and we won, and we kind of hugged our moms. I remember how everyone had made such a big thing out of it as if this was such a novelty."
"There was nobody else that was going to go. That was it. Of course, our moms were gonna go. That was really innocent and not faked," he added.