Casey Affleck

Casey Affleck (born August 12, 1975, Falmouth, Massachusetts, U.S.) is an American actor who gained respect for his ability to convey internal conflict. His performance as Lee Chandler, a surly and emotionally shut-down handyman who after the death of his brother is named guardian of his teenage nephew, in Manchester by the Sea (2016), earned him critical accolades as well as a BAFTA award, a Golden Globe Award, and an Academy Award for best actor.

Affleck grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Though he appeared in the 1988 television production of the Lanford Wilson play Lemon Sky and portrayed a young Robert Kennedy in the 1990 TV miniseries The Kennedys of Massachusetts, it was theatre classes in high school that ultimately persuaded Affleck that he wanted to be an actor. He made his big-screen debut in Gus Van Sant’s satire To Die For (1995). He later appeared in Van Sant’s Good Will Hunting, which was cowritten by his older brother, Ben Affleck. Casey Affleck turned in character performances in such small films as Desert Blue (1998), 200 Cigarettes (1999), and Michael Almereyda’s modern-day adaptation of Hamlet (2000) before being cast as a member of the crew in the commercially successful caper comedy Ocean’s Eleven (2001), a role he repeated in Ocean’s Twelve (2004) and Ocean’s Thirteen (2007). Affleck drew favorable reviews for his performance as the depressed title character in Steve Buscemi’s Lonesome Jim (2005).

Affleck was nominated for both the Golden Globe and Oscar for best supporting actor for his portrayal of Robert Ford in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007), and he starred in his brother’s directorial debut, Gone Baby Gone (2007). He later played a psychopathic killer in Michael Winterbottom’s The Killer Inside Me (2010). He also cowrote, directed, and acted in the much-reviled mockumentary I’m Still Here (2010), starring Joaquin Phoenix. Affleck’s subsequent films included the action comedy Tower Heist (2011), the period romance Ain’t Them Bodies Saints (2013), and the science fiction film Interstellar (2014).

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Following his acclaimed performance in Manchester by the Sea, Affleck appeared in the action films The Finest Hours and Triple 9 (both 2016) and played one of the lead roles (opposite Rooney Mara) in A Ghost Story (2017). He then portrayed a detective on the trail of a charming bank robber (played by Robert Redford) in The Old Man & the Gun (2018). Affleck wrote, directed, and starred in his next feature, Light of My Life (2019), playing a father in a dystopian world where females have been all but wiped out by a plague. After appearing in the 19th-century historical drama The World to Come (2020), he was cast as a psychiatrist in the thriller Every Breath You Take (2021). In 2023 he appeared in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, a historical epic about physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer and the race to create the atomic bomb during World War II.