Early life

Affleck was born in Falmouth, Massachusetts. He has English, Irish, German, Scottish, French, and Swedish ancestry. His mother, Christopher Anne "Chris" (née Boldt), was raised on New York's Upper East Side by her mother, longtime Museum of Modern Art director of public information Elizabeth Shaw (née Roberts and her mother's second husband, Samuel Shaw, an attorney. Her father, O'Brien "Obie" Boldt, was a Democratic activist and professor of political science at the City University of New York. One of Affleck's maternal five times great-grandfathers was congressman Adam Rankin Alexander.

Affleck's father, Timothy Byers Affleck of Rhode Island, was a stage manager, director, writer and actor with the Theater Company of Boston in the mid-1960s During Affleck's childhood, he worked as an auto mechanic, a carpenter, a bookie, an electrician, a bartender and a janitor at Harvard University. His parents divorced when he was eight due to his father's chronic alcoholism. Affleck was raised by his mother. When Affleck was 13, his father moved to Indio, California, entered rehab, became an addiction counselor and later reconnected with his adult sons.

Affleck is three years younger than his brother Ben. They were childhood friends with actor Matt Damon. He was raised in a mostly Episcopalian family. As a child, he had numerous pets, including cats, snakes, guinea pigs and turtles. Affleck graduated from Cambridge Rindge and Latin School in June 1993. He was inspired by his high school drama teacher Gerry Speca. Affleck went to George Washington University for one year to study politics and later transferred to Columbia University in New York City, where he majored in physics, astronomy, and Western philosophy for two years, but never graduated. 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 Nicole Kidman, Matt Dillon, and Joaquin Phoenix. After co-starring with Halle Berry and Jim Belushi in the 1996 box office flop Race the Sun, the following year he appeared in two films featuring his brother Ben: Chasing Amy and Good Will Hunting.

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.

In 2001, Affleck became part of an ensemble cast in the remake 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 and he has extended dialogue in Spanish. Affleck lived in Mexico as a child and speaks Spanish.

Affleck co-wrote the screenplay for the 2002 film Gerry with Gus Van Sant and Matt Damon. The film, about two men who get lost while hiking in the desert, received mixed reviews; after premiering at the Sundance film festival, it got only a limited release in the United States in 2003. 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 (2007-12)

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 performance, 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." Other reviewers praised Affleck for being "terrific" and a "real revelation" while making "an indelible impression as the insecure, physically unprepossessing weakling."

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. 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." 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." Manohla Dargis of The New York Times said: "I’m not sure exactly when Casey Affleck became such a good actor ... Most actors want you to love them, but doesn’t seem to know that, or maybe he doesn’t care."

In 2010 Affleck released his first major directorial effort, I'm Still Here, a mockumentary 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. After much speculation, Affleck admitted shortly after the film's release that Phoenix's role was a "performance" rather than genuine behavior, stating that he "never intended to trick anybody", rather, the production was a work of "gonzo filmmaking" inspired by journalists such as Hunter S. Thompson.

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. 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. However, critics generally praised Affleck's performance as a serial killer.

2013-present

Affleck starred opposite Rooney Mara in the independent modern-day Bonnie and Clyde film Ain't Them Bodies Saints and opposite Christian Bale in the drama Out of the Furnace, both released in 2013. In November 2014, he had a supporting role in Christopher Nolan's Interstellar.

Affleck and producer John Powers Middleton announced in June 2014 that they were launching a production company, Untitled Casey Affleck/John Powers Middleton Project. Affleck will serve as an equal share producer, while continuing to pursue writing, acting, and directing projects. Affleck is set to direct an as-yet-untitled biopic about baseball player Josh Hamilton, from his own screenplay. Jack Reynor is expected to star. Affleck also co-wrote a screenplay with brother Ben and David Mandel for the baseball drama The Trade, to be directed by Jay Roach. He also sold an animated comedy television series to FOX. He has also signed on to star as Meriwether Lewis in an upcoming HBO miniseries based on the 1996 book Undaunted Courage. He is attached to star as a detective in Boston Strangler, to be directed by Mark Romanek.

Affleck played the lead in John Hillcoat's heist thriller Triple 9 (2016), with Justin Chang of Variety remarking of his performance: "Affleck continues to cement his standing as one of the most persuasive leading men of his generation." Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle said: "Affleck’s mental radio is tuned to a station only he hears, and he arrests our attention. I wonder if any other screen actor has ever seemed so focused and so distracted at the same time. He thinks more than he says, and so we listen, trying to get the part he’s leaving out."

In Disney's The Finest Hours, he played a taciturn engineer onboard a sinking ship. David Sims of The Atlantic said he "gives the kind of measured, thought-out performance he’s so eminently capable of, even if the film isn’t complex enough to rise to his level ... It’s hard to encapsulate exactly why Affleck is so good, but as with his other best performances (Gone Baby Gone, The Assassination of Jesse James), he animates an introverted character with subtle mental busywork whenever he’s on the screen." Sheri Linden of The Hollywood Reporter remarked: "With no backstory, Affleck manages to turn his man of few words into the movie’s most compelling figure." Peter Travers of Rolling Stone described "a sharp, subtle" performance. Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune praised his "subtle and lived-in" Massachusetts dialect: "It's a shrewd performance, too, but that accent alone is enough to counter all the lousy, over-the-top Baaaahhhhston accents at the movies lately." Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle said he "plays Sybert as an odd, reflective guy, very internal, not a glad-hander, not a natural leader of men, but rather as someone who just knows what to do. He radiates competence and intelligence, such that we believe that others would recognize these qualities and listen to him." Ty Burr of the Boston Globe said the part was "played by Casey Affleck in the Gary Cooper tradition: terse, modest, assured." Brian Truitt of USA Today found him "stoically engaging." but Chris Nashawaty of Entertainment Weekly said his "pulse barely rises above narcolepsy when he isn’t busy mumbling unintelligibly."

In Kenneth Lonergan's Manchester By the Sea, Chang of Variety praised a "bone-deep performance" while David Fear of Rolling Stone stated: "He's given impressive turns before — see Gone Baby Gone or The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford — but the way Affleck gradually shows you the man's bone-deep grief and emotional damage makes you believe that one of this generation's finest actors has simply been waiting to be coaxed out." Joshua Rothkopf of Time Out stated that Lonergan has "finally got a complex central performance that anchors his ambitions to cinema’s all-time great brooders—to Brando, Pacino and the Heath Ledger of Brokeback Mountain." Brian Tallerico of RogerEbert.com praised a "breathtaking" performance while Drew McWeeny of HitFix said the "lead performance is, simply put, the model of what great film acting should look like."

Personal life

Affleck married actress Summer Phoenix, his girlfriend of six years, on June 3, 2006 in Savannah, Georgia. The couple were introduced by her brother, Joaquin. They have two sons, Indiana August, who was born in May 2004 in Amsterdam, and Atticus, born in January 2008. As of 2006, he resides in Los Feliz, Los Angeles with his family. In March 2016, Affleck and Phoenix announced they were separating.

Affleck is involved with many animal rights movements and campaigns for PETA and Farm Sanctuary. He is a vegan, and eats no "meat or any other animal products."

In 2010, Affleck was sued by two former female co-workers for sexual harassment; the cases were settled out of court.

Filmography

Year	Film	Role	Notes
1988	Lemon Sky	Jerry	TV
1990	The Kennedys of Massachusetts	Robert Kennedy (12-15)	TV miniseries
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 No. 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
	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	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 — Alliance of Women Film Journalists 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 — Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting 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 Nominated — Vancouver Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actor
	Gone Baby Gone	Patrick Kenzie	Nominated — Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Acting Ensemble 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	Himself	Directorial debut film
2011	Tower Heist	Charlie Gibbs
2012	ParaNorman	Mitch Downe	Voice
2013	Ain't Them Bodies Saints	Bob Muldoon	Nominated — Seattle International Film Festival Award for Best Actor
	Out of the Furnace	Rodney Baze, Jr.	Nominated — Satellite Award for Best Supporting Actor - Motion Picture
2014	Interstellar	Tom
2015	Unity	Narrator	Documentary
2016	The Finest Hours	Ray Sybert
	Triple 9	Chris Allen
	Manchester by the Sea	Lee Chandler

Charities

Casey Affleck supports the following charitable causes: Cancer, Animals.

[ Source: Wikipedia ]