Benjamin Géza Affleck (born August 15, 1972) is a Golden Globe Award-nominated American film actor, director, and Academy Award-winning and Golden Globe Award-winning screenwriter. He became known in the late 1990s, after his involvement in the film Good Will Hunting, and has since become a Hollywood leading man, having starred in several big budget films.Affleck had a high-profile romance with actress Gwyneth Paltrow in 1998, following her breakup with actor Brad Pitt. In 2002, he began dating actress/singer Jennifer Lopez, whom he had met prior to filming Gigli. The same year, his engagement to Lopez was announced, and the relationship between the two received a lot of attention by the entertainment media who dubbed the couple "Bennifer". 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 Canada[4]. This negative publicity and media attention was also brought along to the 2004 Jersey Girl, which also was a box office failure. Affleck subsequently dated his Daredevil co-star, actress Jennifer Garner, and the two were engaged after nine months of seeing each other. In May 2005, it was announced that Garner was pregnant and the couple were married on June 29, 2005 on the Caribbean islands of Turks and Caicos. Garner gave birth to a daughter, Violet Anne Affleck, on December 1, 2005 in Los Angeles, California. The couple currently lives in Santa Monica, California and Cambridge, Massachusetts. Affleck has a holiday home in Savannah, Georgia.
Affleck is an avid poker player, regularly entering local events. He has been tutored by poker professionals Amir Vahedi and Annie Duke, and won the California State Poker Championship on June 20, 2004, taking home the first prize of $356,000, which qualified him for the 2004 World Poker Tour final tournament. Affleck is a Boston Red Sox fan. Affleck supports a non-profit organization called the A-T Childrens Project. He started supporting the A-TCP after meeting Joe Kindregan when filming Forces of Nature. Kindregan, who was then 9 years old, has a rare disease called ataxia-telangiectasia (A-T). Affleck has attended benefits and spoken to Congress to advocate for the A-T Childrens Project. The disease, described as like having muscular dystrophy, cystic fibrosis, immune deficiency and cancer all at once, is progressive; children with A-T usually do not live beyond their late teens.
