Ben Affleckis reflecting on a year filled with two difficult deaths.
After the Oscar winner’s dadTimothy Affleckdied in April and his momChris Affleckdied in June, he spoke publicly for the first time about how impactful their passings have been on his perspective.
“It’s sort of a big thing, and it’s caused me to start thinking about my own childhood in ways that has been a little bit different,” Ben said on the Sept. 30 episode of theStreets We Grew Up Onpodcast. “I’ve certainly learned to even more deeply appreciate my mom and really value and see what she did and what the sacrifice and commitment that she made and how complete it was.”
Chris died on June 2 after receiving a diagnosis in December which gave her six months to live, according toher obituary. The diagnosis she received was pancreatic cancer, according toThe Hollywood Reporter.
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Meanwhile, Ben’s brotherCasey Affleckrevealed earlier this month that their dad Timothy also died in 2026.
“They were very important to me,” Casey said of his parents Sept. 8 while speaking on a panel at the Venice Film Festival, perPeople. “I really wanted to show this movie to them and I didn’t get to. I think they would have liked it.”
After Chris and Timothy divorced when Ben and Casey were young, the actors grew up with their mom in Massachusetts while their dad relocated to California.
Though Ben’s relationship with Timothy was rocky throughout his youth, theGone Girlactor came to recognize that the “principal lesson and legacy” of his dad’s life is that he “dramatically improved it” through his sobriety journey.
“Part of being an adult is learning that your parents are just people,” he toldPeoplein February 2020.“They’re not perfect. They were just doing their best.”
And though Ben realized that “we expect perfection out of our parents” when we’re kids, he grew to understand his parents better.
“I learned to be able to look at things that I wish were different about my childhood and say they did their best,” he continued. “They were dealing with their own stuff and their own childhood trauma. The goal is to try and break some of these painful cycles.”
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