Casey Affleck

Casey Affleck
Affleck in June 2006
Born	Caleb Casey McGuire Affleck-Boldt August 12, 1975 (1975-08-12) (age 35) Falmouth, Massachusetts, United States
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1988–present
Spouse	Summer Phoenix (2006-present)

Caleb Casey McGuire Affleck-Boldt^[1] (born August 12, 1975), best known as Casey Affleck, is an American actor. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, he played supporting roles in mainstream hits like Good Will Hunting (1997) and Ocean's Eleven (2001) as well as in critically acclaimed independent films such as Chasing Amy (1997). During this time, he became known as the younger brother of actor and director Ben Affleck, with whom he has frequently collaborated professionally. In 2007, his breakout year,^[2][3] Affleck gained recognition and critical acclaim for his work in Gone Baby Gone and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, which garnered him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Career 2.1 Early work, 1995-2006 2.2 Breakthrough, 2007-present 3 Personal life 4 Filmography 5 References 6 External links

Early life

Affleck was born in Falmouth, Massachusetts, the second son of Christopher Anne "Chris" (née Boldt), a school district employee and teacher, and Timothy Byers Affleck, a drug counselor, social worker, janitor, auto mechanic, bartender, and former actor with the Theater Company of Boston.^[1] Affleck has Irish and Scottish ancestry.^[4] He is three years younger than his brother Ben Affleck.^[5] As a child he had numerous pets, including cats, snakes, guinea pigs and turtles.^[6] Affleck went to George Washington University and later transferred to Columbia University in New York City, where he majored in physics, astronomy, and Western philosophy but never graduated.^[7] Affleck worked sporadically on television while finishing high school and attending college during the early 1990s.

Career

Early work, 1995-2006

Affleck's first movie role was as a sociopathic teenager in Gus Van Sant's 1995 dark comedy To Die For, alongside Joaquin Phoenix and Nicole Kidman.^[8] After co-starring with Halle Berry in the 1997 box office flop Race the Sun, later that year, he appeared in two films featuring his brother Ben: Chasing Amy and Good Will Hunting. The latter was co-written by Ben and his best friend Matt Damon, both of whom went on to win the Academy Award For Best Original Screenplay.

Affleck's next few films, the underground movie Desert Blue (1998) with Kate Hudson, the black comedy Drowning Mona (1999) with Bette Midler, Jamie Lee Curtis, Neve Campbell, and Danny DeVito, and the 2001 horror movie Soul Survivors (co-starring Luke Wilson) were all critical as well as commercial failures.^[9]

In 2001, Affleck became part of an ensemble cast in the re-make of the Rat Pack movie Ocean's Eleven, directed by Steven Soderbergh. Supporting the star leads, George Clooney and Brad Pitt, Affleck played Virgil Malloy, one of the pair of mormon brothers hired to drive the getaway vehicle. Affleck reprised this character in two sequels, Ocean's Twelve (2004) and Ocean's Thirteen (2007). In the third installment of the trilogy, several scenes are set in Mexico, where Affleck lived as a child, and in which he has extended dialogue in Spanish, which he speaks fluently.^[10]

Affleck co-wrote the screenplay for the 2002 film Gerry with Gus Van Sant and Matt Damon. The film, about two guys who get lost while hiking in the desert, received mixed reviews and, after premiering at the Sundance film festival, got only a limited release in the United States in 2003.^[11] In 2006, Affleck featured in Lonesome Jim and The Last Kiss, where he plays a friend of Zach Braff's character. He then made a cameo in the Joaquin Phoenix-directed video "Tired of Being Sorry" for Balthazar Getty's band Ringside.

Breakthrough, 2007-present

In 2007, Affleck starred in the Western The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, playing Robert Ford opposite Brad Pitt's Jesse James. For his unanimously praised performance,^[12] he received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture, a nomination for a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role - Motion Picture, and an Oscar nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role. Entertainment Weekly observed that "a revelatory Casey Affleck brings Ford to life with a mature sense of an underling's craven, fawning petulance."^[13] Other reviewers praised Affleck for being "terrific"^[14] and a "real revelation"^[15] while making "an indelible impression as the insecure, physically unprepossessing weakling."^[16] The film's director, Andrew Dominik, said that Affleck was so good in the role partly because, like Ford, he “knows what it’s like to live in somebody’s shadow,” referring to Affleck's older brother.^[3]

Affleck also played his first leading man in a mainstream production in 2007. He starred in the Boston crime thriller Gone Baby Gone as the protagonist, Patrick Kenzie. Directed, produced, and co-written by Ben Affleck, the film was critically acclaimed and earned Casey further plaudits for his acting.^[17] The Boston Globe commented, "I'd never stopped to consider Casey Affleck as a movie star before, but under his big brother's tutelage, he blooms as a leading man of richly watchable savvy and intelligence."^[18] The New York magazine similarly praised Affleck's portrayal of the tough private detective and concluded, "Casey Affleck has never had a pedestal like the one his brother provides him, and he earns it. His Patrick is pale and raspy ... He’s not physically imposing, but he reels off four-letter words so fast that it leaves his bigger and more dangerous opponents staring in disbelief."^[19]

Next, Affleck teamed with Jessica Alba and Kate Hudson in The Killer Inside Me (2010), a film adaptation of the 1952 novel of the same name.^[20] In January 2010, The Killer Inside Me premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, where it was received poorly by many critics and created controversy due to its graphic portrayal of violence against women, which prompted many viewers to walk out of the screening.^[21] However critics generally praised Affleck's performance as a serial Killer.

In April 2008, director Ridley Scott announced that his new project, The Kind One, a period noir drama set for release in 2012, would star Affleck in the lead role.^[22] Since 2009, Affleck has been directing a documentary about the musical career of his friend and brother-in-law Joaquin Phoenix, who attempted to live a lifestyle of a rapper in one year.^[23][24]

Personal life

Affleck married Summer Phoenix, his girlfriend of six years, on June 3, 2006 in Savannah, Georgia.^[25] The couple were introduced by her brother, Joaquin. The couple have two sons, Indiana August, who was born on May 31, 2004 in Amsterdam^[26] and Atticus,^[27] who was born in January 2008.^[28]

Affleck is involved with many animal rights movements and campaigns for PETA and Farm Sanctuary.^[29] He is a vegan, and thus, does not eat "meat or any other animal products."^[30] Affleck is fluent in Spanish and resides in Los Angeles, California and Winter Park, Florida with his family.^[10]

In 2010, Affleck was sued by two former female co-workers for sexual harassment.^[31]

Filmography

Year	Film	Role	Notes
1988	Lemon Sky	Jerry	TV
1990	The Kennedys of Massachusetts	Robert (12-15)	TV mini-series
1995	To Die For	Russel Hines
1996	Race the Sun	Daniel Webster
1997	Chasing Amy	Little kid
	Good Will Hunting	Morgan O'Mally
1998	Desert Blue	Pete Kepler
1999	200 Cigarettes	Tom
	American Pie	Tom Myers	Uncredited
	Floating	Prep #1
2000	Drowning Mona	Bobby Calzone
	Committed	Jay
	Hamlet	Fortinbras
	Attention Shoppers	Jed
2001	Ocean's Eleven	Virgil Malloy	Nominated — MTV Movie Award for Best On-Screen Team Nominated — Phoenix Film Critics Society Award for Best Cast
	American Pie 2	Tom Myers
	Soul Survivors	Sean
2002	Gerry	Gerry	Also Screenwriter
2004	Ocean's Twelve	Virgil Malloy
2005	Lonesome Jim	Jim
2006	The Last Kiss	Chris
2007	Ocean's Thirteen	Virgil Malloy	Nominated — Teen Choice Award for Choice Movie: Chemistry
	The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford	Robert Ford	International Cinephile Society Award for Best Supporting Actor National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actor National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actor San Francisco Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actor Satellite Award for Best Supporting Actor - Motion Picture St. Louis Gateway Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actor Nominated — Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor Nominated — Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actor Nominated — Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actor Nominated — Chlotrudis Award for Best Actor Nominated — Detroit Film Critics Society Award for Best Supporting Actor Nominated — Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor - Motion Picture Nominated — Houston Film Critics Society Award for Best Supporting Actor Nominated — London Film Critics Circle Award for Actor of the Year Nominated — Online Film Critics Society Award for Best Supporting Actor Nominated — Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role - Motion Picture Runner-up — Utah Film Critics Association Award for Best Actor Nominated — Vancouver Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actor
	Gone Baby Gone	Patrick Kenzie	Prism Award for Best Performance in a Feature Film Nominated — Houston Film Critics Society Award for Best Actor Nominated — Irish Film & Television Award for Best International Actor
2010	The Killer Inside Me	Lou Ford
	I'm Still Here
2012	The Kind One[32]	Danny Landon

References

External links

• Casey Affleck at the Internet Movie Database
• Casey Affleck at Allmovie
• Casey Affleck Exclusive Interview on peta2