Chris Anne Affleck, the mother of Hollywood actors Ben and Casey Affleck, has died following a battle with pancreatic cancer.
She was 83.
The retired teacher died peacefully in her sleep on June 2, two days after fulfilling her final wish of attending her grandson’s high school graduation.
Her family announced the death through an obituary published in July.
Chris Anne, whose full first name was Christopher, was diagnosed in December 2025 and told by doctors that she had about six months to live.
Following the diagnosis, her greatest wish was to survive long enough to witness her grandson complete high school.
She attended the graduation ceremony with her family on May 31 and died in her sleep two days later.
Chris Anne is survived by her sons, Ben, 53, and Casey, 50, as well as five grandchildren: Indiana, Violet, Atticus, Fin and Samuel.
Her family described the grandchildren as the driving force of the final two decades of her life.
Ben is widely known for portraying Bruce Wayne, also known as Batman, in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Justice League and The Flash.
Casey is also an Academy Award-winning actor, recognised for his performance in Manchester by the Sea.
Chris Anne Affleck’s life beyond Hollywood
Born in New York City in 1942, Chris Anne attended the Nightingale-Bamford School before studying at Radcliffe College.
She became one of the first Radcliffe women to receive a Harvard University diploma and later earned a master’s degree from the institution.
Despite her elite education, Chris Anne developed an early commitment to equality and social justice.
During her school years, a teacher reportedly criticised her for condemning racial segregation without listening to what the teacher called the “other side.”
Chris Anne responded by using a payphone to contact a Woolworth’s store and ask whether it refused to serve Black customers.
The incident reflected her willingness to question authority and take action when confronted with injustice.
Her commitment to civil rights continued into adulthood.
During the 1960s, she travelled to Mississippi to teach literacy classes as part of Freedom Summer, a campaign supporting voting rights and educational opportunities for Black Americans.
She also participated in demonstrations against the Vietnam War and embraced the counterculture movement of the period.
Rather than pursuing a more lucrative profession after Harvard, Chris Anne became a public-school teacher.
She spent 35 years in the classroom before retiring in 2008.
Her family said she treated every student equally, regardless of whether the child had recently arrived from Haiti or came from a wealthy Cambridge family.
After retiring, Chris Anne continued her political and humanitarian work.
She volunteered during Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, travelled to Palestine and Israel in 2009 and later became involved with the Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine.
She was also a founding board member of the Sustainable Cape project.
Chris Anne had Ben and Casey with her former husband, Timothy Affleck, in 1972 and 1975 respectively.
The family moved to Massachusetts in the mid-1970s, where she continued her teaching career.
She and Timothy later divorced when Ben was 12.
Casey credited his mother with maintaining stability in the family and preserving traditions during the difficult period.
He recalled that she insisted on family holidays and visits to relatives, even when her sons preferred to remain at home with their friends.
Those trips later became some of his most treasured childhood memories.
Chris Anne also supported Ben’s acting ambitions from an early age.
She introduced him to a casting-director friend, allowing the young Ben to audition for television films and commercials.
The early acting jobs gave him enough experience and exposure to pursue show business professionally.
Chris Anne accompanied Ben and his longtime friend Matt Damon to the 1998 Academy Awards, where they won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for Good Will Hunting.
Ben later said he could not understand why people considered it unusual that he and Damon brought their mothers to the ceremony.
Chris Anne also remained close to Ben’s former wife, Jennifer Garner, following the couple’s divorce.
She attended Ben’s 2022 wedding to Jennifer Lopez despite suffering a leg injury shortly before the ceremony.
Representatives for Ben and Casey had not issued separate public statements on their mother’s death at the time of the announcement.
