Ben Affleck has spoken publicly for the first time about losing both of his parents within two months of each other, saying their deaths have changed how he sees his childhood. The 54-year-old actor and director opened up on Kerry Washington's Street You Grew Up On podcast in an episode released on Wednesday, 30 September. He and Washington co-star in the upcoming film Animals.
"My parents just died," Affleck said, explaining that his father, Timothy, died in April and his mother, Chris, in June. He called it "sort of a big thing", and said it had left him thinking about his early life in a different way. Chris Affleck died on 2 June aged 83, having been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer around six months earlier. Timothy died aged 76, and no cause of death has been shared.
His son Casey confirmed the loss at a Venice Film Festival press conference earlier this month, saying his film Company was dedicated to their parents. Affleck said losing his mother had deepened his appreciation of her. After she died, he read letters she had written to her own parents when she was young, which showed him a side of her he had never fully seen.
He said she had made him and Casey the absolute centre of her life so thoroughly that he had never really viewed her as a separate person from himself. He also reflected on his father's struggles with drinking and work during his childhood, and on the tension at home before his parents divorced in 1984, when he was around 11. He said he was relieved when they split.
Ben and Casey were raised mainly by their mother in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The brothers have both spoken in recent weeks about the double loss, though Ben's podcast appearance was his first public comment on it.