Chris Anne Affleck, the mother of Oscar winners Ben Affleck and Casey Affleck, died June 2, her family announced. She was 83 and diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in December.
Christine Anne Boldt was born in New York City in December 1942. She was a graduate of Harvard University and spent 35 years as a public school teacher. She retired in 2008 and was a fierce civil rights advocate throughout her life, having served as one of the original freedom riders who went into the Deep South during the 1960s.
Chris and her ex-husband Timothy Affleck welcomed their first child, Ben, in 1972. Ben’s brother, Casey, was born in 1975, around the time their family relocated to Massachusetts, where she continued her teaching career.
“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 told The Hollywood Reporter in 2012. “My dad had a more working-class lifestyle. He didn’t go to college. He was an auto mechanic and a bartender and a janitor at Harvard.”
By the time Ben was 12, his parents divorced. As his passion for entertainment grew during his adolescence, Chris played a hand in his early industry beginnings, connecting her son with her former Harvard roommate, casting director Patty Collins, who helped him audition for commercials and TV movies.
