Ben Affleck's mother Chris Anne Affleck dead at 83 after battle with pancreatic cancer

Chris Anne Affleck, the mother of Ben and Casey Affleck, has died at the age of 83 from pancreatic cancer.

Her family revealed the sad news Thursday following her passing on June 2, according to a Legacy obituary. 

The matriarch of the family is survived by sons Ben, 53, and Casey, 50; and five grandkids: Indiana, 22, Violet, 20, Atticus, 18, Fin, 17, and Sam, 14, who were described as 'the animating force of her last two decades.'

According to her obit, she had been told by doctors she had six months to live last December, and her final wish was to see her grandson's high school graduation.

She attended the ceremony this past May 31, and died while sleeping just two days later.

The Daily Mail has reached out to representatives for Ben Affleck and Casey Affleck for further comment on the story. 

Chris Anne had been born in December of 1942 in New York City. She graduated from Harvard University and was a public school teacher for 35 years prior to her retirement in 2008.

Ben, speaking with The Hollywood Reporter in 2012 about his mother, said, 'My mother taught public school, went to Harvard and then got her master’s there and taught fifth and sixth grade in a public school.'

Chris Anne developed a keen sense of social consciousness early in life, as 'she made the most of an elite education while remaining skeptical of the tightly cloistered world it represented' while attending the school Nightingale-Bamford, according to her obit.

In one instance, a teacher yelled at her for condemning Jim Crow since she hadn't spoken to the 'other side,' according to her obit.

She subsequently called a Woolworth's store to inquire if they had turned down business from Black people. It marked her essence of being 'willing to acknowledge that she might be wrong and never letting that uncertainty be an excuse for inaction,' her obit stated.

She was a staunch advocate for civil rights, and had traveled to the South in the 1960s during a time of social change, according to her obituary.

Chris Anne 'taught literacy classes in Mississippi during Freedom Summer, marched against the Vietnam War, and reveled in 1960s counterculture,' her obituary stated.

She carried these values into the classroom, according to the obit, as 'every student, whether just arrived from Haiti or Cambridge upper crust, was a cherished citizen of her classroom republic, equal to each other and to herself.'

Chris Anne and ex-husband Timothy Affleck welcomed Ben in 1972 and Casey in 1975. In the mid-1970s, they moved to Massachusetts, as Chris Anne taught there. They got divorced when Ben was 12-years-old, and Timothy would move to California afterwards.

Casey Affleck, speaking to Boston Magazine in 2006, credited his mother for keeping the household steady during the turbulent time.

'She always made us go on family vacations,' Casey said. 'When you’re a kid, you just want to stay home and hang out with your friends. You don’t want to go to your grandparents’ house.

'But tradition meant a lot to her. She just insisted. We had a lot of fights about that. But now I love it and those are some of my favorite memories.'

She encouraged her son Ben's show business aspirations early on, introducing him to casting director Patty Collins, who had been her roommate at Harvard when she attended college, according to THR. Collins assisted a young Ben with auditions for TV films and commercials.

Ben, in a 2007 interview with Parade, opened up about his early days in front of the camera with his mother's support.

'I got into acting as a young child on account of a sort of arbitrary thing,' he said at the time. 'A friend of my mom’s was a casting director so, really as kind of a lark.

'I had a couple of acting jobs that had just enough exposure to give me the option to continue if I wanted to. I followed through with it.'

Chris Anne was behind Ben throughout his show business career, and went to the Academy Awards with him and Matt Damon in 1998, when they won the Oscars for Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen for their work on Good Will Hunting.

Ben recalled to Vanity Fair in April of 2023: 'We were sitting next to our moms and we won, and we kind of hugged our moms. I remember how everyone had made such a big thing out of it as if this was such a novelty.

'I remember thinking, being insecure, like, "Why? Why is it weird that we’re bringing our moms?" Who else do you think we would bring?'

The obit noted that while 'Chris was suitably proud of her descendants’ achievements ... she was delighted when they questioned, defied, or cleverly engaged authority.' 

Chris Anne was very close with Ben's ex-wife Jennifer Garner, and they remained tightknit following her son's split from the actress. 

They had been spotted numerous times on outings in the years after the couple's split. Chris Anne was present for a Thanksgiving celebration last year at Garner's home in Los Angeles, Page Six reported. 

She had also been to Ben's 2022 nuptials to Jennifer Lopez, braving a health scare the day before with a leg injury before returning to see them exchange vows. 

She retired from teaching in 2008 but stayed active tending to social causes she held dear. 

They included campaigning for former President Barack Obama, putting together the Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine, and being a board member for the Sustainable Cape project in Truro, Massachusetts, her obit stated. 

After she was presented with the health diagnosis late last year, Chris Anne contacted her pal Josh Laub to record 'oral histories of his time as a principal in the South Bronx,' according to her obit.