Ben Affleck's Parents: Meet the Actor's Father Timothy and Late Mother Chris Anne

Ben and Casey Affleck's careers were influenced by their parents, Timothy and Chris Anne Affleck.

Before their divorce, Timothy and Chris Anne encouraged both of their sons to explore acting. Their ties to the local theater community gave Ben and Casey early exposure to the stage and helped spark their interest in arts.

"We both started out as children doing this largely because my father was in the theater and our mother took us to the theater all the time," Casey told Collider in August 2013. "And we just had a lot of people around us that were in the arts, and we both had this very influential teacher in high school."

Scroll down to learn more about Timothy and Chris Anne.

Timothy and Chris Anne welcomed their first son, Ben, on August 15, 1972, while the family lived in California. The family later settled in Massachusetts, where Casey was born on August 12, 1975.

"We'd just run around in the street and get in trouble," Casey recalled during an interview with Boston Magazine in May 2006. "Throw firecrackers off the library roof, go down and play baseball, run around throwing rocks at each other, play football in the street. There were a lot of kids on the street where I grew up. It was very interracial, and it was working class."

After earning her undergraduate degree from Radcliffe College and a master's degree from Harvard University, Chris Anne began working as a teacher in a local school district.

"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," Ben revealed to The Hollywood Reporter.

Chris Anne retired from teaching in 2008.

Alongside her career as an educator, the mother of two was a civil rights activist who later volunteered for Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign and supported various charitable organizations.

According to The New York Times, Timothy, once an aspiring playwright, dropped out of high school and traveled to writer William Faulkner's home. Although his writing career never took off, he later performed with the Theater Company of Boston before taking on a variety of jobs.

The Gone Girl actor told CineZine in 1997, "My father was an auto mechanic at Autotorium and a bartender and such. Now, he lives in California working at a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center writing grant proposals and counseling people."

While promoting his film The Way Back in 2020, Ben confirmed to People his father struggled with alcoholism but had been sober for 30 years.

"I have a tremendous amount of respect for what that takes and what that means," he said. "Part of being an adult is learning that your parents are just people. They're not perfect. They were just doing their best. As a child, we expect perfection out of our parents."

His father did not get sober until Ben was 19, per the Pearl Harbor star.

"I also see my Dad's life for what it is, which is the guy who tried his best, who dealt with addiction and then overcame it," he acknowledged. "My father was definitely a low bottom alcoholic and yet for thirty years, he hasn't had a drink. And now, I take that as the principal lesson and legacy of his life — is that he dramatically improved it.

Timothy and Chris Anne divorced in 1984 when Ben was 12 years old.

"My parents were divorced, so my brother and I, we'd often go see my dad at his work like many people do," The Accountant actor told Vanity Fair in 2021. "Parents work, so I spent a lot of time being close to my dad at the bars."

While the siblings were primarily raised by their mother following the split, Ben has kept in touch with Timothy via email. He also often visits his father in Los Angeles because of the patriarch's positional vertigo.

"If he flies he gets really dizzy, so he has to drive out to California, which he does a couple times a year. We talk, but we email mostly," he explained to The Hollywood Reporter in 2012.

Chris Anne died on June 2, months after doctors gave her six months to live following her pancreatic cancer diagnosis.

According to her death certificate, she passed away from cardiopulmonary arrest while "visiting her son's residence" and suffered from pancreatic adenocarcinoma.