Ben Affleck (born Benjamin Géza Affleck-Boldt; August 15, 1972 in Berkeley, California,) is an American actor, film director, writer, and producer. Affleck has Irish, Scottish, and English ancestry, and is a distant cousin of actor Matt Damon. Affleck was raised in a mostly Episcopal family. His family moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, when he was very young and his parents divorced in 1984. At age eight, Affleck met 10-year-old Matt Damon, who lived two blocks away. The two would later attend Cambridge Rindge and Latin School together, although they were in different year groups. Affleck attended Occidental College in Los Angeles, as well as the University of Vermont. He became known in the mid-1990s after his involvement in the film Mallrats (1995), and later played the lead role in Chasing Amy in 1997. Affleck became an Academy Award winner along with Matt Damon for their collaborative screenplay in the 1997 film Good Will Hunting. He has established himself as a Hollywood leading man, having starred in several big budget films, such as Armageddon (1998), Pearl Harbor (2001), Changing Lanes (2002), The Sum of All Fears (2002), and Daredevil (2003). Affleck recently has drawn critical acclaim for his work as a filmmaker in Gone Baby Gone (2007) and The Town (2010). In the latter of which he played the main role. He has collaborated on occasion with his younger brother, actor Casey Affleck. After a high profile relationship with actress Gwyneth Paltrow in 1998, his relationship with actress/singer Jennifer Lopez attracted worldwide media attention in which Affleck and Lopez were dubbed as "Bennifer". Despite a wedding planned for September 14, the couple broke up in 2004, both blaming the media attention - including an alleged incident in which Affleck partied with Christian Slater and some lap dancers in Vancouver. Following the broke with J.Lo., he began dating Jennifer Garner. The two were engaged after nine months of dating. They arried in June 2005 in Turks and Caicos, located in the Caribbean. The couple has two daughters, Violet Anne, born December 2005, and Seraphina Rose Elizabeth, born January 2009. Affleck has been actively involved in politics, along with a non-profit organization called the A-T Children's Project. He and Matt Damon also founded the production company LivePlanet.
