Oscar winner Casey Affleck, brother of Ben Affleck, has revealed that the actors lost both parents this year.
The mother of the Academy Award winners, Chris Anne Affleck, died after a battle with pancreatic cancer in June at age 83, the family announced last month. Now, Casey Affleck, 51, has disclosed that the brothers’ father, Timothy Affleck, also died this year.
Casey’s latest film, Gothic, was one he’d hoped to complete before their deaths, he shared.
“It’s dedicated to my parents because I lost both my mom and my dad this year, and they’re very important to me and I really wanted to show this movie to them, and I didn’t get to,” Casey said during a press conference at the Venice Film Festival. “I think they would have liked it.”
Timothy Affleck was an aspiring playwright and performed at the Theater Company of Boston, alongside actors Dustin Hoffman and the late Robert Duvall, according to the New York Times.
Ben Affleck, 54, previously shared that his father struggled with alcoholism—a battle the actor has been candid about in his own life. In 2020, Ben told People that his father had been sober for 30 years, praising the feat as “the principal lesson and legacy of his life” at the time.
The actors’ mother was given just six months to live, according to her obituary, and made it long enough to fulfill her last wish—to see her grandson graduate—before dying just two days after the May 31 ceremony. Chris attended Harvard University and taught public school for 35 years until she retired in 2008.
She and her former husband, Timothy, divorced when Casey and Ben were around 11 or 12 years old. She remained an active force in her sons’ lives as they rose to Hollywood stardom, attending the 1998 Academy Awards alongside Ben and Matt Damon, when Good Will Hunting won Best Original Screenplay. Affleck won his second Oscar as a producer of 2012’s Argo. Casey Affleck won Best Actor for his role in Manchester by the Sea.
A source told People in July that the brothers were taking the losses “really hard.”
