The Art of Rising Again: The Ben Affleck Story (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798187498536)

He was the youngest screenwriter in Oscar history. Then Hollywood watched him become a punchline. Then, against every reasonable prediction, he became one of the most respected filmmakers of his generation - twice.

THE ART OF RISING AGAIN is the definitive account of Ben Affleck's improbable, unfiltered journey from a working-class Cambridge childhood shadowed by a parent's addiction, to a Best Original Screenplay win at twenty-five, to a very public unraveling that made him a tabloid punchline, to a directing career that earned him a Best Picture Oscar - and back through relapse, divorce, and reinvention, all the way to building a studio that's rewriting Hollywood's rules.

• The Cambridge years - the childhood friendship with Matt Damon that would change both their lives


• The forty pages that became Good Will Hunting - and the Oscar night that made him the youngest screenwriting winner in Academy history


• Gigli, Bennifer, and the fall - how fame, tabloids, and addiction nearly ended it all before thirty


• The comeback nobody saw coming - Gone Baby Gone, The Town, and the Best Picture win for Argo


• Batman, relapse, and rock bottom - the 2018 crisis he almost didn't survive


• Sobriety, reinvention, and a second act with Jennifer Lopez - and the wisdom that came from doing it all in public, twice


• Artists Equity - the studio he built to change who gets rich in Hollywood

This is not a story about a man who never fell. It's a story about a man who fell repeatedly, in full public view - and who kept finding the will to begin again.

For anyone who believes talent alone isn't the whole story - resilience is.