Long the Solange to his Beyoncé, Casey Affleck seems poised to tortoise his way past brother Ben at month’s end.
An odds-on Oscar favourite for Best Actor — his recent nomination puts the brothers in a teeny club of siblings both recognized by the academy — the Manchester by the Sea actor has long lived with the good/bad consequences of a workplace shadow. Sibling synergy, yes, but also the challenges of brand differentiation.
In the context of showbiz, where blood is sometimes thicker than talent — and in which Baldwins, Quaids and Maras bloom — shared DNA sometimes speeds up the fame game. Take the case of the Brothers Hemsworth, where two hunks, Liam and Chris, are better than one; or the Gyllenhaals, who established an art house echo when Maggie and Jake popped up in the early aughts.
In the Casey-Ben dynamic, the labour division was clear for a while. The elder Affleck had that string of tabloid-blazing romances (Bennifer One and Two, a pre-Goop Gwyneth) and an up/down career that reaped him early success: nabbing an Oscar for co-writing Good Will Hunting, a Best Picture win and career-redemption with Argo, and even big-money mojo (hey, Batman).
The younger Affleck, meanwhile, made do on the fringes, getting scraps from brother (starring in his other directorial effort, Gone Baby Gone) and the occasional critical head-tap (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, say). Regarding some of his more A-game ensemble work, 41-year-old Casey recently told Marc Maron on his podcast, “If it’s Ocean’s Eleven, I was 11 . . . maybe 10.”
“I’ll always have his back,” Casey shared about Ben in the interview, revealing the extent to which their lives have been enmeshed, right down to their peer group in their native Boston. “My own kids, they’re about three years apart and they have different friends . . . Ben and I always had the same friends.”
And yet — plot-twist! — nothing his superstar sib has done onscreen has ever earned the acclaim whipped up for Casey via Manchester by the Sea, pulled along by writer-director Kenneth Lonergan, who has “an ear for how people really talk, not how movies think they do,” as the L.A. Times’ Kenneth Turan surmised deftly. He stands with most critics when he describes “Affleck’s quietly ferocious performance” and “his willingness to submerge himself into this character to an almost frightening extent.”
If there’s one thing that academy members like more than a comeback sometimes, it’s the celebrity turnstile-jumper. In that way, Casey could be this year’s Mo’Nique.
Sixteen: that’s the number that Oscar trivia-philes ought to jot down for the big night on Feb. 26. Ben and Casey would be the 16th Oscar-winning sibling set, should the latter prevail. One winning brother-sister twosome? Warren Beatty and Shirley MacLaine (he won for directing Reds in 1981; she for her turn in 1983’s Terms of Endearment).
The only brothers ever up for acting Oscars? That would be River Phoenix (1989) and Joaquin Phoenix (2001, 2006, 2013). Sister acts, generally, have proved more common: Jennifer and Meg Tilly, from Canada, both nominated in different years in the 1980s and ’90s, and Lynn and Vanessa Redgrave, head to head in 1967 (both lost to Elizabeth Taylor).
In the hall of fame of psychodrama, there is no bigger silver screen sibling sizzle than that of Joan Fontaine and Olivia de Havilland, who quarrelled over Oscars and roles, and even lovers. With a standoff that lasted into its eighth decade until Fontaine died in 2013 (de Havilland lives on, at 100), the two Golden Age stars were up against each other at the 1942 Oscars.
Fontaine won, later recalling in her memoir, “I stared across the table, where Olivia was sitting. ‘Get up there!’ she whispered commandingly. All the animus we’d felt toward each other as children . . . all came rushing back in kaleidoscopic imagery . . . I felt Olivia would spring across the table and grab me by the hair.”
De Havilland would go on to win two Oscars of her own, but the sisterly rapport never settled; they spent decades not speaking.
Quipped Fontaine, at one point, “If I die first, she’ll undoubtedly be livid because I beat her to it!”
The interesting sisterly dynamics go on in today’s Hollywood, by the way. There is, for instance, young Elle Fanning, who got into the movie biz being known as Dakota Fanning’s younger sis, but whose naturalness onscreen, and aptitude for the red carpet and, well, height (she literally looms over her sister) is winning. As Dakota leaves the cute-girl zone, it could be Elle who has the longer, juicier career. Nobody said life was fair — and showbiz certainly ain’t.
Meanwhile, Ben Affleck has put Casey on blast. After the latter didn’t thank his brother in his acceptance speech at the Golden Globes — Casey did mention Ben’s BFF, Matt Damon — Ben roasted him by telling Jimmy Kimmel that he thinks Casey still has a good shot at taking the Oscar, even if he would be the first Academy Award winner who thought “Back to the Future was a true story” and “didn’t brush his teeth from ages 10 to 14.”
This story has been edited from an earlier version that had some incorrect Oscar and movie dates.
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