
You know, Ben Affleck is growing on me. I had always thought he was kind an ass, and kind of a dolt. It's amazing what marriage to Jennifer Garner and things like the following story has done for Ben Affleck's image.
Affleck spoke at the high school commencement ceremony of his friend Joe Kindregan, 19, a Falls Church High graduate whom Affleck met about 10 years ago when Kindregan visited the set of Forces of Nature. The teen-ager has ataxia-telangiectasia, a rare, degenerative diseases. The Make-a-Wish Foundation flew him to the movie's premiere.
Ben Affleck told high school graduates Friday he was an unlikely person to give them advice - then gave it anyway.
"I haven't been in space, I'm not a politician, I'm not a super hero - I'm not even a gangster," he said at the commencement for Falls Church High School, near Washington, D.C. "I've only pretended to be all of those - in some cases just barely."
The actor - the subject of much media coverage - told the seniors: "What others say about you means nothing. What you say about you means everything. Your job is to make other people see you as you are."
Paying tribute to Kindregan, Affleck said, "I'm here because what I learned about the distance between how you see someone and who they are, I didn't learn in Hollywood, I learned from a classmate of yours, my friend, Joe Kindregan."
Aw shucks Ben, you've got me welling up a little here.




(WENN)
Many more photos of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner (including some of Jennifer Garner clearly being moved by the ceremony) are after the jump.