Casey Affleck – Long Before He Won His Oscar

January 6, 2021 88 Comments

July 2007 By Philip Berk

At his press conference in New York for the Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Casey Affleck is there with his pregnant wife and their three year old son. 

She of course is Joaquin Phoenix’s sister.

Knowing how close knit the Phoenix family is, a few weeks later  I asked Joaquin if he had seen Casey’s performance which has since been nominated for an Oscar.

Instead of an answer, he goes into a long diatribe on the virtues of Casey Affleck:

“It’s the frustration of a lot of people that are close to him that we’ve always known that Casey could do the Bourne series, Casey could do Walk the Line, Casey could do any of the movies his friends have done. He’s also the guy behind the scenes on everything. He’s the guy I’ve called on every single f—-g movie when I was terrified and didn’t know what to do. He’s spent hours on the phone talking through stuff. His talent goes far beyond just acting. He’s one of the greatest writers I’ve worked and talked ideas with. We’ve been trying to get him to direct for years. He’s somebody that had to struggle and now that it’s happening for him is just a beautiful thing.”

Luckily Casey wasn’t there to hear it.

But if he were, i think he’d applaud because he has that impish, leprechaun quality.

With him everything is a joke.

You judge for yourself.

In Gone Baby Gone he has his first leading role thanks to his brother Ben, who directed the movie

Growing up, was there any sibling rivalry?

Jokingly he answers, “I’ll do anything I can to take him out. I will stop at nothing to take the man down.”

Then seriously he adds, “We’re sort of different. We’ve always had different interests. Growing up we kind of looked after each other. We were alone a lot; so it never seemed important to be competitive or not want the best for the other person.”

Then again in his joking mode he continues, “He struggles because he is not so conventionally good looking. I’ve always tried to support him in his choices. We love each other and support each other. I did most of his writing on Good Will Hunting and he cast me in this. So we do what we can for one another.”

What can he tell us about being a father?

“I’ve only been one for three years but it’s definitely been the best experience of my life so far.”

(Another son was born in January of this year.)

A few weeks later he’s in Los Angeles for Gone Baby Gone which again has earned him rave reviews and he’s still as flippant as ever. 

So what was it like working with your brother as director?

“The relationship between actor and director is really intense. That’s probably why male directors end up sleeping with their female lead stars and vice versa. I didn’t, but when it’s kind of two men it ends up being a very intense bonding experience. You both want to be good so there’s a lot of conflict, Sometimes there are moments where you share great success together so it can be a great adventure, but it doesn’t come anywhere near the joy of being someone’s brother for 35 years.”

How did that translate on the set?

“It definitely made it easier in innumerable ways. We know the same people, we share the same points of reference; so there wasn’t a lot of explaining to do. It helped that we like the same things. Now that does not   mean we didn’t fight. We fought all the time. Everyday. It was argue, yell at each other, but then you just forget about it. There’s no making up that has to happen. You don’t have to worry about hurting each other‘s feelings, With Ben it didn’t matter, he knew it wasn’t personal; I knew  t wasn’t personal. We could scream at each other and tell them their ideas sucked, and then five minutes later we’re on the same page both feeling excited that we were doing what we want to do.”

Obviously he has that same trust with his wife (Summer Phoenix). 

Can he talk about her and how they met?

“Oh my God, you sound like our therapist. There’s a thousand things I love about her. The first one that comes to mind is that she tolerates me, and not all the women I’ve known have; so that’s nice. When I first met her, she had a film in Cannes (Esther Kahn) and I just so fell in love with her talent and how beautiful she was and not much of a cook.” 

Another funny!  

Then he continues. “I met her through Joaquin who was sort of my best friend. I had met everyone in her family but not her. I don’t now why. I had done To Die For, which is how I met Joaquin. We became really close but three years after being Joaquin’s best friend I still had not met her, and then one day walking down the street I ran into her and her very tall, handsome rock star boyfriend, and I thought she was very cute but didn’t think I had much of a shot, but  then I just pursued her, and finally she gave in, and she became my girlfriend and then we got married and then we had a kid and we have another coming, and she’s the best thing in the world.” 

Were there family differences?

“Innumerable. Besides geographic ones, she grew up in a big family with five kids. I grew up in a small family, just me and Ben. She had her mom and dad. I mostly just had my mother. She lived in Florida and South America. I lived in Boston where it’s freezing cold. She’s Jewish, her mother’s Jewish. My mother is as Wasp as they get. What else can I say? She never went to school. There wasn’t a single night I didn’t have to do all my homework and show it to mother. She’s a good actor. I am not (Who’s kidding who?) She’s been great from an early age. She has a kind of natural talent. I feel like I have to bang my head against the wall and read a script a thousand times just to learn the lines and figure out what I am going to do.” 

Getting this job, was it a given since he knew the director, or did he have to audition for it like any other actor?

“I’ve never begged him on my knees for anything,” he jokes, “but I know what you mean. I was doing Jesse James in Canada. Ben came to visit, and he gave me the script, and he said. ‘I don’t want you to do it, but will you read it?’ He had been working on it for a long time. I think he had other actors in mind. He’d talked to other actors, but my being in Jesse James made him feel like he could persuade Miramar to cast me because it’s a lot harder to get somebody to be the lead in a studio movie if they hadn’t done that before. Luckily I had, so they were okay with it. But I was at first reluctant because if I wasn’t up to it, I didn’t want to ruin the movie. I mean it was his first movie; you don’t get anther chance if it’s not good. So I thought about it for weeks and months whether or not I should do it and finally committed.”

Ben and Matt were close growing up. Were you also?

“I remember when I was seven being on the school bus with Matt. He was older so he would sit in the back of the bus where the cool kids sat. I was younger so I’d have to sit in the front. I had a girl friend — believe it or not in the third grade I had a girlfriend —  Matt also had a girl friend who was my girl friend’s sister. I remember them sitting in the back of the bus making out. I got to sit in the back of the bus  because my girl friend was sitting with her sister. That was sort of the first time I met Matt.  I was wearing my karate outfit to school. And Matt said, ‘You like Karate?  What belt are you?’ I said I was  yellow belt, and Matt said he was a Black belt in street fighting. I don’t think Matt has ever been in a street fight in his life! So now when I sometimes give him a friendly ass kicking or wrestle him to the floor, I remind him he’s a ‘blackbelt in street fighting.

“Why am telling this story?” he wants to know. 

So do I!

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