Ben Affleck
Ben Affleck, full name Benjamin Geza Affleck, was born on 15 August 1972 in Berkeley, California.
Affleck and his friend, Matt Damon won an Academy Award for the screenplay of "Good Will Hunting".
Having previously dated Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Affleck was engaged to Jennifer Lopez in 2002, but they split up in 2004.
On June 30 2005, Ben Affleck married Jennifer Garner in the Turks and Caicos Islands in the Caribbean. Affleck and Garner had appeared together in Daredevil. At the end of November 2005 they had a baby.
Before the success of "Good Will Hunting" in 1997 Affleck appeared mainly in independent films, for example, in Kevin Smith's "Mallrats" (1995) and "Chasing Amy" (1997).
Since then Affleck has acted in such films as "Shakespeare in Love" (1998), "Armageddon" (1998), and "Pearl Harbor" (2001).
In August 2006, Ben Affleck, speaking at the premiere in Venice of Hollywoodland, in which he plays Superman actor George Reeves who apparently shot himself, said:
"There are some things I understand about George Reeves's life because of the kind of life I have ... To audiences, George was the Man of Steel. There was more to him than that and that frustrated him, and that's what I can understand ... Sometimes an audience can conflate an actor's life with the character he's playing."
Affleck is an accomplished poker player, winnning the California State Poker Championship Sunday, thereby picking up $356,400.
According to Inside the Actors Studio, Ben Affleck owns 5 motorcycles, and is an avid collector of vintage video-arcade machines.
In 2007, Ben Affleck directed and co-wrote a detective film, Gone Baby Gone, which starred his brother Casey Affleck.
In December 2007, the BBC reported that Ben Affleck is to replace Edward Norton in the film version of State of Play.