Ben Affleck has spoken publicly for the first time about losing both of his parents earlier this year.
The 54-year-old filmmaker’s father, Timothy Affleck, died in April. His mother, Chris Anne Affleck, died two months later in June.
During an appearance on his Animal co-star Kerry Washington’s Streets We Grow Up On podcast this week, Affleck explained how the back-to-back bereavements have prompted him to reconsider his childhood.
“It’s sort of a big thing, and it’s caused me to start thinking about my own childhood in ways that [have] been a little bit different,” the Oscar-winning screenwriter told Washington.
He said the experience had deepened his appreciation for his mother, adding that he now more clearly recognized “what she did and what the sacrifice and commitment that she made and how complete it was.”
Chris’s death was reported in July, with her obituary stating that she died on June 2 after battling pancreatic cancer. In early September, Ben’s brother Casey Affleck, 51, confirmed that their father had also died earlier this year.
Ben Affleck has spoken about the deaths of both of his parents
Chris Anne Affleck died on June 2 after a battle with pancreatic cancer. She is pictured with Ben in 2004
While promoting his film Company at the Venice Film Festival, Casey dedicated the project to his parents.
“It’s dedicated to my parents because I lost both my mom and my dad this year, and they were very important to me,” he said. “I really wanted to show this movie to them, and I didn’t get to. I think they would have liked it.”
In Tuesday’s podcast episode, Ben revealed that he found letters his mother had written before he was born after her death.
The discovery offered him a new perspective on the woman he had known as a devoted mother. “All I knew was a person who just made me and my brother the absolute most important center of her life,” he said.
Affleck said he was particularly struck by Chris’s ability to work while remaining a fully present parent to him and his brother.
He also noted that she built the same kind of close bond with her grandchildren.
Timothy and Chris, who were also parents to the two movie stars, are survived by five grandchildren: Indiana, 22, Violet, 20, Atticus, 18, Fin, 17, and Sam, 14.
Ben is pictured with his father in Los Angeles in 2013
Affleck has one brother, 51-year-old Casey Affleck
While promoting Company at the Venice Film Festival, Casey dedicated the film to his parents after losing both of them this year
Chris’s grandchildren were described as “the animating force of her last two decades” in her Legacy obituary.
According to the publication, she was told by doctors that she had six months to live last December, and her final wish was to see her grandson’s high school graduation.
She attended the ceremony this past May, and died in her sleep days later.
Timothy mostly stayed out of the limelight, but made an appearance in Casey’s 2010 I’m Still Here mockumentary starring Joaquin Phoenix.
Chris graduated from Harvard University and was a public school teacher for 35 years until her retirement in 2008.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter about his mom in 2012, Ben said: ‘My mother taught public school, went to Harvard and then got her master’s there and taught fifth and sixth grade in a public school.’
Chris became socially conscious early in life, and ‘made the most of an elite education while remaining skeptical of the tightly cloistered world it represented,’ according to her obituary.
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