Age: 53
male
Benjamin Géza Affleck (born August 15, 1972) is an American actor and filmmaker. His accolades include two Academy Awards and three Golden Globe Awards. He began his career as a child when he starred in the PBS educational series The Voyage of the Mimi (1984, 1988). He later appeared in the independent coming-of-age comedy Dazed and Confused (1993) and various Kevin Smith films, including Mallrats (1995), Chasing Amy (1997) and Dogma (1999). Affleck gained wider recognition when he and childhood friend Matt Damon won the Golden Globe and Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for writing Good Will Hunting (1997), which they also starred in. He then established himself as a leading man in studio films, including the disaster film Armageddon (1998), the war drama Pearl Harbor (2001), and the thrillers The Sum of All Fears and Changing Lanes (both 2002). After a career downturn, during which he appeared in Daredevil (2003) and Gigli (2003), Affleck received a Golden Globe nomination for portraying George Reeves in the noir biopic Hollywoodland (2006). His directorial debut, Gone Baby Gone (2007), which he also co-wrote, was well received. He then directed, co-wrote and starred in the crime drama The Town (2010) and directed and starred in the political thriller Argo (2012); both were critical and commercial successes. For the latter, Affleck won the Golden Globe and BAFTA Award for Best Director, and the Golden Globe, BAFTA, and Academy Award for Best Picture. He has since starred in the psychological thriller Gone Girl (2014), the thriller The Accountant (2016), the action-adventure Triple Frontier (2019), and the sports drama The Way Back (2020). In 2016, he began portraying Batman in superhero films set in the DC Extended Universe. Affleck is the co-founder of the Eastern Congo Initiative, a grantmaking and advocacy-based nonprofit organization. He is also a stalwart supporter of the Democratic Party. Affleck and Damon are co-owners of the production company Pearl Street Films.
While Batman has had plenty of success on the big screen, his partner Robin has only made a few cinematic appearances. Both Burt Ward and Chris O’Donnell played a teenage Dick Grayson in the 1960s and 1990s, respectively. Since Joseph Gordon-Levitt played an original character named Robin in 2012’s “The Dark Knight Rises,” a comic-inspired Robin hasn’t appeared in live-action on-screen in two decades. While Grayson remains the definitive Robin in the larger pop cultural landscape, his successors like Jason Todd, Tim Drake, and Damian Wayne have shockingly never appeared outside of animated adaptations. Since Ben Affleck’s Batman seems to be older than his cinematic forbearers, a movie focusing on an adult Dick Grayson as Nightwing and the other Robins could help give Affleck’s Batman some context. There have already been some highly-publicized allusions to Jason Todd’s demise that could be expanded upon with a Robin-centric tale. As the 2015 crossover “Robin War” showed, Batman’s four most famous Robins have a compelling group dynamic and play off each other well. A Robins movie could also take another hint from that crossover and examine the public’s perception of Batman in the DC Universe.
