Chris Affleck died in June 2026 after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer six months prior

NEED TO KNOW

• Chris and Timothy Affleck welcomed two sons: Ben and Casey
• They divorced in 1984
• Chris died in June 2026 after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer a few months earlier

Ben Affleck‘s mom was a big supporter of his career before her June 2026 death.

Christopher “Chris” Anne Affleck (née Boldt) welcomed two sons, Ben and Casey Affleck, with her ex-husband, Timothy Affleck. They raised Ben and Casey outside of Boston, and the pair divorced around 1984 when Ben was 12 years old.

Following their split, Timothy, who was an alcoholic, moved across the country to California, while Chris took charge of raising Ben and Casey. Though they credit their mother with giving them a sense of normalcy in a turbulent time, their father’s absence left a lasting impact.

Still, Ben has said he had positive early memories of him: The actor previously noted that his dad gave him his “love of literature” and imparted skills that have helped him progress far in his career — of which Timothy is proud.

“Both of my sons are hard workers. They have a tremendous amount of empathy, they don’t forget where they came from, they’re very kind and generous. Those are the qualities that I value,” Timothy told Grazia Daily in February 2018.

On June 2, Chris died after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in December 2025, per The Hollywood Reporter. She was 83.

Here’s everything to know about Ben Affleck’s parents, Chris and Timothy Affleck.

Chris and Timothy raised Ben in Massachusetts

Chris and Timothy were living in California when they welcomed their first son, Ben, in 1972. The family relocated to Massachusetts around the time their second son, Casey, was born in 1975. The couple raised Ben and Casey in the Central Square area of Cambridge.

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

Ben’s friend, Matt Damon, also spent a lot of time with the brothers as they all attended Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School together. Looking back, he says that the Affleck household was always a fun place to be.

“That dinner table was one of the funnest places to be growing up because of all the debates that went on — on any subject,” Damon told The Hollywood Reporter in October 2012. “You had to craft an argument and a good one to survive. Ben really honed his debating skills there. He’s not a guy you want to get in a debate with.”

Chris worked as an elementary school teacher

When Ben was growing up, his mother worked as a teacher in a local school district. During her time teaching, she applied to Harvard University and went on to receive her master’s degree from the acclaimed school.

“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 explained to THR.

Chris retired from teaching in 2008.

Timothy was an aspiring playwright who held a variety of jobs

While Chris was involved in education, Ben told THR that his father, Timothy, had a “more working-class lifestyle.” Timothy didn’t attend college and held several jobs throughout his life, including working as a janitor at Harvard, where Chris went to school.

“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,” Ben said in a 1997 interview with CineZine.

In addition to holding odd jobs, Timothy was once an aspiring playwright, according to The New York Times. In high school, he briefly dropped out to travel to the home of writer William Faulkner.

“It’s a famous family story. My dad drove down to Oxford, Miss., got directions at a general store and knocked on Faulkner’s door. When a guy appeared, my dad said, ‘Hey, are you William Faulkner?’ The guy, badly hung over, asked, ‘Are you a writer?’ Dad shook his head no, and Faulkner said, ‘All right then, come on in,’ ” Ben recalled.

Although his writing career didn’t take off, he did go on to perform with the Theater Company of Boston alongside Dustin Hoffman, Robert Duvall and Blythe Danner.

Chris and Timothy divorced when Ben was 12

When Ben was about to enter his teenage years, his parents separated, after which Timothy moved to California, and Chris kept their home in Central Square — raising Ben and Casey on her own.

Speaking to PEOPLE in February 2020, Ben recalled how “painful“ the divorce felt at the time. A decade prior, Casey told Boston Magazine in 2006 that their mother did everything she could to maintain a sense of normalcy.

“She’s very conscientious. She made us stay inside when Skylab was falling. I couldn’t use the blender until I was 15. I’d go, ‘Mom, I’m not gonna cut my hand off with the f—— blender. I’m 15 years old,’ ” he said.

He continued, “She always made us go on family vacations. When you’re a kid, you just want to stay home and hang out with your friends. You don’t want to go to your grandparents’ house. But tradition meant a lot to her. She just insisted. We had a lot of fights about that. But now I love it, and those are some of my favorite memories.”

Ben’s father has been sober for over 30 years

When Chris and Timothy divorced, his father’s life “sort of hit the skids,” Ben told THR. At the time, Timothy was an alcoholic, and two of Ben’s grandparents had dealt with alcohol addiction as well.

Reflecting on this period, Ben said it was a “scary and trying” time as Timothy struggled with alcoholism while in California. Fortunately, Timothy entered rehab and got sober when the actor was 19 years old. Fast forward to 2020, he marked 30 years of sobriety.

“My father has thirty years of sobriety, and I have a tremendous amount of respect for what that takes and what that means,” Ben told PEOPLE. “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.”

The Pearl Harbor star also shared that when he remembers his childhood now, he’s “learned to be able to look at things” that he wished had been different and now accepts them for what they were.

As for his dad’s decision to get sober, Ben revealed that it left him with a lasting impression of what he was capable of too.

“The most enduring lesson my father taught me is the degree to which it’s possible to change your life and patterns. It gives me hope that with the right amount of work and discipline, I can address and remedy some of the things I don’t like very much about myself,” he told The New York Times.

Ben’s parents encouraged him to be involved in the arts

Ben was drawn to the arts from a young age, thanks to his parents’ participation in the theater community. He grew up often attending theater productions, and by the time he was in high school, he was an active member of the drama department — and had found a mentor in his teacher Gerry Speca.

“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, 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,” Casey explained to Collider in August 2013.

Ben landed some of his first roles thanks to his mom

Considering Ben grew up around the theater, his mother, Chris, thought acting would be a good way to keep him occupied and out of trouble. She reached out to her Harvard roommate, casting director Patty Collins, and together, they encouraged Ben and Casey to audition for local productions as well as commercials and TV movies. One of Ben’s first roles was in a Burger King commercial.

“I got into acting as a young child on account of a sort of arbitrary thing. A friend of my mom’s was a casting director so, really as kind of a lark,” Ben told Parade in October 2007. “I had a couple of acting jobs that had just enough exposure to give me the option to continue if I wanted to. I followed through with it.”

In his interview with Boston Magazine, Casey added, “I don’t know if we were really acting. We were usually extras. My mother was really supportive. But we didn’t really care that much about it other than it was a day off from school and 20 bucks.”

They warned Ben about the negative side of being an actor

Before Ben decided to pursue acting full-time, his parents wanted to make sure he understood the realities of working in the entertainment industry. They had him meet up with an unsuccessful actor so that he could hear about the ups and downs of Hollywood.

“When I was 17, my parents made me go out to dinner with a really bitter failed actor and listen to his experiences,” he told the Daily Mail in February 2011. “It was a very difficult thing to go through. He had nothing but bad things to say about trying to be an actor.”

Ben added, “I thought, ‘Well, I have to love it even if I don’t have success at all. It has to really be that important to me, and I have to want to do it that much.’ ”

Ben took Chris as his date to the Oscars in 1998

When Ben was first nominated for an Oscar for his movie Good Will Hunting in 1998, he and Damon both took their moms as their dates. Recalling the career milestone, Ben shared that he couldn’t imagine bringing anyone else.

“We were sitting next to our moms, and we won, and we kind of hugged our moms. I remember how everyone had made such a big thing out of it as if this was such a novelty,” Ben told Vanity Fair in April 2023. “I remember thinking, being insecure, like, ‘Why? Why is it weird that we’re bringing our moms?’ Who else do you think we would bring?”

He continued, “There was nobody else that was going to go. That was it. Of course, our moms were gonna go. That was really innocent and not faked.”

Ben keeps in touch with his dad periodically

Ben has not been as close with his father throughout his life, and the pair mostly communicate via email. He previously shared that his father isn’t able to travel often due to a health issue, but he occasionally visits Los Angeles.

“My father has positional vertigo, and 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,” Ben told THR in 2012.

A few years prior, the actor spoke to Rolling Stone in April 2004 about his upbringing and discussed his parents, including how he stayed in touch with Timothy.

“I visited with him yesterday,” Ben said. “My dad’s a good man. We have a good relationship.”

Chris died in June 2026

After being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in December 2025, Chris was given just six months to live, according to an obituary shared by The Hollywood Reporter.

She lived long enough to fulfill her final wish of seeing her grandson graduate from high school on May 31, 2026, which took place just two days before her death on June 2.

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