Ben Affleck
Ben Affleck’s story kicks off in sunny California but really picks up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he grew up with his mom, a teacher, and his dad, a social worker. Affleck always had his eye on acting—he was basically a toddler when he started, landing a Burger King commercial and a gig on The Voyage of the Mimi. And, fun fact, he met Matt Damon when they were just kids, running around playing little league and doing drama classes together. Those two would end up being pretty inseparable.
Affleck bounced through TV movies and tiny roles before getting a decent shot in Dazed and Confused. Still, for a while, he and Damon were just barely scraping by, sick of being stuck as “guy #4” or whatever in movies nobody remembers. So they wrote Good Will Hunting, hustled it around Hollywood, and—after some drama—Kevin Smith helped get it into the right hands. Boom. Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, suddenly Affleck wasn’t just another struggling actor. He could actually pick his projects for once.
He went all-in on the big stuff—Armageddon, Pearl Harbor, you name it. Not everything was gold (Gigli, anyone?), but Affleck started getting noticed for more than just his acting. He jumped into directing with Gone Baby Gone, which people really dug, and The Town and Argo, both massive hits—Argo even grabbed the Oscar for Best Picture. Then he stepped up as Batman, joining the superhero world in Batman v Superman and Justice League. Dude’s career’s been a wild ride, honestly.