Hey, Summer Camp Fans!
We love featuring celebrities who are former summer campers from back in the day. I first started posting about celebrities who had attended camp in 2013 and, since then, I’ve covered over 100 celebrities on this Blog. Having covered so much ground, it seems appropriate to backtrack and retread some of the famous folks who were already featured to take a deeper look.
So, as we posted five years ago on the Blog, as he had yet to don the black cape of the Dark Knight in his role as Batman in ‘Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice’, we revisit Bat—I mean, Ben Affleck who we learned attended Crossroads for Kids in Massachusetts.
Lesser known by his full name, Benjamin Geza Affleck-Boldt, I thought it might be fun to go over some other points about Mr. Affleck that you might not have known that we didn’t quite get around to in our first post:
What’s in a Name?
A simplification of his name for the stage and stardom is common among celebrities and, as we just covered, ‘Ben Affleck’ is not this celebrity’s full name. His full name is Benjamin Geza Affleck-Boldt. ‘Boldt’ is his mother’s last name and ‘Geza’ is his middle name in honor of a family friend who was a Hungarian Holocaust survivor.
Playin’ with Damon
Life-long friends Ben and Matt Damon first met as neighborhood pals when Ben was only 8 and Matt was 10. They attended school together and it was Ben who would eventually spark Mr. Damon’s interest in an acting career. After Ben’s appearance in an educational drama and a Burger King commercial, Matt finally joined his friend as an extra in ‘Field of Dreams’ before the two decided to write their own script, ‘Good Will Hunting’.
Triple Threat
Ben has now portrayed three different superheroes as he took on the role of Daredevil from the imagination of Stan Lee in 2003. In the 2006 film ‘Hollywoodland’, Ben played George Reeve, an actor from the 1950’s who starred as Superman in the television series ‘Adventures of Superman’. And now that he has put on the bat-suit, he has become the only major actor to have worn both Batman and Superman costumes on screen.
Good Will Cleaning
Ben and his buddy Matt caught their big break when they stopped looking for roles and created their own by writing ‘Good Will Hunting’. The story of a janitor at MIT whose unrecognized, self-taught genius is finally discovered. There’s an element of truth to this character as Ben’s father was a janitor at the Ivy League Institution.
I’m sure we’ll all enjoy watching the rest of Mr. Affleck’s career unfold as there seems to be no stopping this bright actor. “It doesn’t matter how you get knocked down in life,” he has said. “Because that’s going to happen. All that matters is that you got to get up.” Try living by these simple yet powerful words and, as always, thanks for reading.
- John