Ben Affleck’s perspective on life shifted after he lost both of his parents, mom Chris and dad Timothy, in the span of two months.
“It’s a big year of life. My brother [Casey Affleck] and I, our parents died just two months apart, beginning of April and June,” Ben, 54, told GQ in an interview published on Tuesday, October 6. “That’s a lot, man.”
News broke in July that Ben and Casey’s mother had died at age 83 on June 2. Earlier this month, Casey, 51, revealed at the Venice International Film Festival that their father had also died recently.
During his interview on Tuesday, Ben opened up about how his parents’ deaths affected him.
“It just brings up all these — I mean, your childhood, how you were raised, you see things differently, you appreciate your parents in different ways, and you think about your own mortality and your own life and your own children and what you want to do with it,” he explained. “And the bare fact of the very fleeting nature of all of our lives kind of stares you back in the face. And you realize, yeah, we only get so much time.”
Ben also reflected on what his mom and dad’s deaths have taught him about grief.
“Often the end of life isn’t full of wisdom and resolve,” he said. “Stuff you haven’t fixed in life stays unfixed. And in the case of my mom, she was pretty extraordinary and brave. I mean, she’s an amazing woman and her death really did cause me to even more deeply and fully appreciate her and her life.”
Ben continued, “But yeah, you face that stuff and it makes you think, ‘OK, how do I want to spend the rest of this time? Because you realize there’s not all that much of it.’”
Looking back at his relationship with his dad, Ben said they had a “complicated” dynamic in Timothy’s final years and were “not as close.” (Timothy and Chris divorced when Ben was a child. The Good Will Hunting actor and his brother were primarily raised by their mother.)
“It is horrible, but it’s not tragic,” Ben admitted. “You think it’d be really sad and not a tragedy. That was an interesting thing. This is normal.”
The Accountant star, who shares three kids with ex-wife Jennifer Garner, added, “I certainly don’t want to outlive my children. That would be the worst thing I could imagine. So this is the way it’s supposed to go, but it’s still really sad for me.”
Ben broke his silence on his parents’ deaths during a September 30 appearance on the “Streets We Grew Up On” podcast.
“It’s sort of a big thing, and it’s caused me to start thinking about my own childhood in ways that has been a little bit different,” he said. “I’ve certainly learned to 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.”
