Ben Affleck’s mother Chris Anne Affleck dead at 83 after battle with pancreatic cancer

Ben and Casey Affleck’s mother, Chris Anne Affleck, died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 83.

His family announced the sad news on Thursday, following his death on June 2. Heritage obituary.

The patriarch’s surviving sons are Ben, 53, and Casey, 50; and her five grandchildren: Indiana (22), Violet (20), Atticus (18), Fin (17) and Sam (14), described as ‘the life-giving force of her last two decades’.

At the time of his death, doctors had told him last December that he had six months to live, and his dying wish was to see his grandson’s high school graduation.

He attended the ceremony last May 31 and died while sleeping just two days later.

The Daily Mail has reached out to representatives for Ben Affleck and Casey Affleck for further comment on the story.

The actor and his mother were photographed at an Academy Awards party in 1998.

Chris Anne was born in New York in December 1942. He graduated from Harvard University and taught public school for 35 years before retiring in 2008.

While I’m talking Hollywood Reporter He said of his mother in 2012: ‘My mother taught public school, went to Harvard and got her master’s degree there, and taught fifth and sixth grades in a public school.’

Chris Anne developed a keen sense of social awareness early in life as she attended the Nightingale-Bamford school, ‘making the most of an elite education, while remaining skeptical of the tightly closed world it represented’, according to her obituary.

A teacher once yelled at him for denouncing Jim Crow because he didn’t talk to “the other side,” according to his obituary.

He then called a Woolworth’s store to ask if they were turning away jobs from Black people. His obituary noted that he marked the essence of ‘being willing to admit that you might be wrong and never letting that uncertainty become an excuse for inaction.’

He was a staunch supporter of civil rights and traveled to the South during a time of social change in the 1960s, according to his obituary.

Her obituary noted that Chris Anne ‘taught literacy classes in Mississippi during Freedom Summer, marched against the Vietnam War, and enjoyed the counterculture of the 1960s.’

According to Obit, he brought these values ​​into the classroom because ‘every student, whether newly arrived from Haiti or the upper crust of Cambridge, was a cherished citizen of his class republic, equal to each other and to himself.’

Chris Anne was seen with her son Ben and grandson Samuel in April 2025.

Chris Anne, Ben and Samuel seen in Brentwood, California in June 2015

Casey Affleck and Chris Anne were seen at a movie premiere in April 2000.

Chris Anne and her ex-husband Timothy Affleck welcomed Ben in 1972 and Casey in 1975. In the mid-1970s, they moved to Massachusetts, where Chris Anne taught there. They divorced when I was 12 and Timothy would later move to California.

Speaking to Boston Magazine in 2006, Casey Affleck credited his mother for keeping the house tidy during this tumultuous time.

“He would always take us on family vacations,” Casey said. ‘When you’re a kid you just want to stay home and hang out with your friends. You don’t want to go to grandma and grandpa’s house.

‘But tradition meant a lot to him. He just insisted. We had many fights about this. But I love it now and these are some of my favorite memories.’

According to THR, she encouraged her son Ben’s show business aspirations early on, introducing him to casting director Patty Collins, who was his roommate at Harvard when he went to college. Collins helped young Ben audition for TV movies and commercials.

Ben, in an interview in 2007 ParadeHe talked about his first days in front of the camera with the support of his mother.

‘I started acting when I was a little kid for some arbitrary reason,’ he said at the time. ‘A friend of my mum’s was the casting director, so it was a real joke.

‘I had a few acting jobs with enough exposure to give me the option to continue if I wanted to. That’s what I followed.’

Chris Anne was seen with Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez in November 2002.

Mother and son were seen in Los Angeles in Brentwood, California, in February 2018.

Chris Anne was very close to Ben’s ex-wife Jennifer Garner in 2009 photos of her with Violet and Fin.

Chris Anne had Ben’s back throughout his career in show business, and in 1998 she went with him and Matt Damon to the Academy Awards, where they won the Oscar for Best Screenplay, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen.

I reminded Vanity Fair In April 2023: ‘We were sitting next to our mothers and we won and we just kind of hugged our mothers. I remember how everyone made such a big deal about it, like it was such a new thing.

‘I remember thinking with insecurity: “Why? Why is it weird that we’re bringing our mothers?” Who else do you think we’ll bring?’

His obituary stated: ‘Chris was appropriately proud of the achievements of his descendants… rejoicing when they questioned, challenged or intelligently intervened in authority.’

Chris Anne was very close to Ben’s ex-wife Jennifer Garner, and they remained tight-knit following her son’s split from the actor.

They were seen on trips many times in the years after the couple’s separation.

She also attended Ben’s wedding to Jennifer Lopez in 2022, braving a health scare from a leg injury the day before before returning to see them exchange vows.

He retired from teaching in 2008 but remained actively involved in social causes he cared about. These included campaigning for former President Barack Obama, founding the Water Justice Alliance in Palestine and serving as a board member of the Sustainable Cape project, according to his obituary.