Ben & Casey Affleck’s Mom Dies at 83 After Pancreatic Cancer Diagnosis

Ben and Casey Affleck's mother Chris Anne Affleck has died at 83 after battling pancreatic cancer.

They announced her death in an obituary posted on The Boston Globe’s website.

According to the obituary, she had been given six months to live, and her greatest wish was to see grandson Atticus, Casey’s eldest child, graduate high school. She attended the event on May 31 and died peacefully in her sleep two days later, on June 2.

The Hollywood Reporter reports she had received her cancer diagnosis in December 2025.

Chris, a Harvard graduate, spent more than three decades as a public school teacher before retiring in 2008.

The obituary stated, “One of the first Radcliffe women to receive a Harvard diploma. She eschewed a world of higher paying careers to spend 35 years as a public school teacher. 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.”

Along with teaching, she was a committed civil rights activist throughout her life, influenced by her stepfather Sam, and taught literacy classes in Mississippi as part of the Freedom Summer campaign in 1964.

The obituary shared, “She retired in 2008, to both see the world and change it. After volunteering on the Obama campaign trail, she traveled to Palestine/Israel, in 2009, and returned home as an organizer with the Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine. In her beloved Truro, she was a founding board member of the Sustainable Cape project… Her activist spirit was woven into the robust social life she kept with friends like Tom and Betsy Bilodeau, Peg and Carl White, Peter and Nancy Garrison, Patty Collinge and Jan Egleson, and those friends’ children and grandchildren.”