Hollywood star’s heartbreak after losing both parents within months

Ben Affleck has opened up about the devastating loss of both his parents, who died just two months apart.

The 54-year-old actor and filmmaker spoke publicly about the double heartbreak for the first time during an appearance on actress Kerry Washington’s podcast Street You Grew Up On.

Affleck revealed his father, Timothy Affleck, died in April, followed by his mother, Chris Anne Affleck, in June.

“My parents just died, both of them. In April and June,” he said.

“It’s sort of a big thing.”

The Good Will Hunting star said the losses had prompted him to look back on his upbringing – and particularly the sacrifices his mother made for him and his younger brother, fellow actor Casey Affleck.

“It’s caused me to start thinking about my own childhood in ways that have been a little bit different,” he said.

“I’ve certainly learned to sort of even more deeply appreciate my mom and really value and see what she did and what the sacrifice and commitment that she made and how complete it was.”

Chris Anne died on June 2 at the age of 83, following a battle with pancreatic cancer. A Harvard graduate and longtime public school teacher, she raised Ben and Casey largely on her own following her divorce from Timothy in 1984.

In the weeks after her death, Affleck discovered letters his mother had written to her own parents when she was a young woman.

Reading them offered him a glimpse of the person she had been before motherhood – a young woman with ambitions, dreams and passions of her own.

Affleck said the discovery made him realise that, growing up, he had known his mother almost entirely through the enormous role she played in his and Casey’s lives.

“All I knew was a person who just made me and my brother the absolute most important center of her life,” he said.

He recalled his mother working long days as an elementary school teacher before returning home and taking care of everything there as well.

It was only after losing her, he admitted, that he fully appreciated just how much of herself she had given to her children.

“She did that so thoroughly and effectively over her whole life, that I didn’t even see her in a way as her own whole person apart from me,” Affleck said. “And it blew me away.”

His father Timothy died aged 76 in April, although news of his death only became public recently when Casey spoke about losing both parents while attending the Venice International Film Festival.

Casey said his parents had been enormously important to him and revealed he had hoped they would get the chance to see his latest film.

For Ben, the two losses in such quick succession have clearly brought a period of reflection, with the Oscar winner now viewing both his parents – and his own childhood – through a different lens.

And in remembering his mother in particular, Affleck’s words carried the bittersweet realisation familiar to many adult children after losing a parent: that behind the person they simply knew as Mum was an entire life, filled with hopes and dreams, that began long before they arrived.