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Ben Affleck says his walk home from high school turned terrifying when two older boys grabbed him and pulled out a knife. The actor was around 15 when the incident happened in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Recognizing the boys from a baseball helped end the confrontation, but Affleck says one of them later killed someone with a knife and went to jail. At the time, he kept the incident from his mother because he didn’t want to scare her. Now a father of three, he regularly reminds his children that they can tell him anything.
Ben Affleck remembers being confronted on his walk home
Affleck discussed the incident in a recent episode of Kerry Washington“Street You Grow Up On” podcast. “I remember I was walking home from high school, I was maybe 15, and I saw these two kids in hoods literally on the other side of the street,” he recalled.
As the boys approached from the other side of the street, Affleck considered running. He remembered being worried about showing fear, even though now he said leaving was the sensible response. “It’s that thing where you’re like, ‘Okay, I’m either going to run,’ but really, running is the worst thing you could do,” he said, referring to running as the “totally sensible thing to do.”
Instead, the teenager decided to keep walking. “Instead, I’m like, ‘I’m not going to run, I’m not afraid of them,'” Affleck recalled.
The situation quickly escalated. “Immediately, they pass me, grab me, take out a knife: ‘Take your money.’ And I was like, ‘Oh!’ I was scared.”
He recognized the boys from playing baseball
During the confrontation, Affleck realized that he knew the boys who threatened him. “Out of the corner of my eye, I realized who they were; I recognized them from playing baseball,” he explained. “It was older guys that I knew and they were like, ‘Oh, yeah, what’s up?'”
Once they got to know each other, the exchange changed. Affleck recalled telling them, “I guess I’m off the hook,” and said they never attacked him again.
Years later, he learned that one of the boys had been involved in a fatal knife attack. “That kid I stole ended up three or four years later killing someone with a knife and going to prison for 20 years,” Affleck said. “So there was that, you know what I mean? And you were very aware of it.”
Affleck did not identify the person in the account provided.
Ben Affleck kept in touch with his mother
Despite being scared, Affleck did not tell his mother, Chris Anne Affleck, what had happened when he got home. “I would never tell his mother anything bad happened,” he said.
When he finally shared the story, she asked why she hadn’t heard about it earlier. “I remember telling that story about the mugging stop. She was like, ‘Why didn’t you tell me?'”
Affleck said it was difficult for him to explain his decision, as well as wanting to protect her from worry. “And I couldn’t, for the life of me, think why, but I never would, I didn’t want to bother her. I didn’t want to scare her.”
Chris Anne died in June at the age of 83. Affleck also spoke through the podcast about losing both parents this year and rethinking parts of his childhood.
He wants his own children to feel comfortable talking
Affleck now shares three children with his ex-wife, Jennifer Garner: Violet, 20, Fin, 17, and Samuel, 14. Remembering how much he kept himself growing up, he encourages them to come to him. “I’m always like, ‘You know you can tell me anything – anything! I’m so good with anything you have to say,'” he told Washington.
His children’s response is a little more enthusiastic. “And they’re kind of like, ‘Oh my God, will this stop?'”
Affleck describes the tensions surrounding his high school
The actor also recalled the environment around his school in the 1980s, describing tensions related to race, ethnicity and financial circumstances. “The high school I went to, I started that high school in 1986,” Affleck said. “In 1981, a child was killed there in a race fight. It was a lot of the workers and poor people felt they were fighting against that.”
Along with these divisions, he remembered a friendship that transcended them. “There was a very intense and real sense of ethnicity and…various small tribes of some kind,” he said. “But also, that you were with everyone. And that kind of friendship was going instead.”
Affleck and Washington’s conversation comes ahead of their film, “Animals.”
