Chris Anne Affleck, the mother of Oscar winners Ben and Casey Affleck, died last month after battling a terminal illness. She was 83.
The Affleck matriarch’s death was confirmed in an obituary shared in the Boston Globe, which highlighted her work as an educator and an activist.
Born Christopher Anne Boldt in New York City in 1942, she was raised among siblings, who she “cherished.” She also idolized her stepfather Sam for serving in World War II and supporting the Civil Rights Movement. She attended Nightingale-Bamford, where it’s said she “made the most of an elite education while remaining skeptical of the tightly cloistered world it represented.”
Affleck later became an educator herself, notably teaching literacy classes in Mississippi in 1964. She would go on to spend 35 years as a public school teacher. Additionally, she was one of the first Radcliffe women to receive a Harvard diploma.
She later married Timothy Affleck, with whom she welcomed sons Ben and Casey in 1972 and 1975, respectively. They later divorced around 1984.
Her other “favorite young people” included her five grandchildren, Indiana (2004), Violet (2005), Atticus (2008), Fin (2009), and Sam (2012), who were described as “the animating force of her last two decades.”
“Chris was suitably proud of her descendants’ achievements, but she was delighted when they questioned, defied, or cleverly engaged authority,” her obituary further noted.
Affleck retired in 2008, but kept busy by volunteering on the Obama campaign trail and organizing for Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine. She was also a founding board member of the Sustainable Cape project.
Per Affleck’s family, she was given six months to live in December of 2025, which is when she began taking the oral histories of friend Josh Laub, a former principal in South Bronx.
“Her greatest wish after her diagnosis, however, was to live to see her grandson graduate high school,” the statement concluded. “She did so, attending with her family on May 31, 2026. She died peacefully, in her sleep, two days later.”
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