Casey Affleck | Rotten Tomatoes (2024)

While still in his twenties, the likeable and low-key Casey Affleck enjoyed a slow and steady rise as an actor as he saw the show business mechanics from the inside out while watching his older brother Ben Affleck gain meteoric Hollywood success - as well as the inevitable and subsequently vicious backlash. Still, the younger Affleck saw himself on another path, eschewing studio-produced Frankenstein projects in favor of eclectic character parts. The promise of his early work in "To Die For" (1995) and "Good Will Hunting" (1997) did eventually lead him to the blockbuster types like "Ocean's Eleven" (2001) and its star-packed sequels. While nestled comfortably into one of Hollywood's most entertaining ensembles, Affleck still found a way to comfortably transform in a variety of projects, creating a witty, quirky onscreen persona along the way. How ironic then, that it was his superstar brother who, despite potential cries of nepotism, cast Affleck in the moody, haunting thriller that was Ben's directorial debut, "Gone, Baby, Gone" (2007) - making critics and audiences see his little brother as a real leading man in his own right at long last. However, even an Oscar-nominated turn in "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" (2007) didn't cause Aff*ck to change his idiosyncratic career path: he next directed a quirky mockumentary, "I'm Still Here" (2010), co-written by longtime friend Joaquin Phoenix and starring Phoenix as a fictionalized version of himself on a bizarre farewell tour to his life as an actor. Supporting roles in hits like animated comedy "ParaNorman" (2012) and Christopher Nolan's science fiction fantasy "Interstellar" (2014) kept Affleck in the public eye until his breakthrough performance in Kenneth Lonergan's "Manchester by the Sea" won him the Academy award for Best Actor and made him a mainstream film star at last. However, his next project "A Ghost Story" (2017) made it clear that Affleck was sticking to his idiosyncratic indie roots.