Ben Affleck recounts teenage knife robbery in Cambridge

Actor Ben Affleck shared a traumatic memory from his adolescence during an appearance on Kerry Washington’s podcast, ‘The Street You Grew Up On’. He recounted being robbed at knifepoint when he was approximately 14 or 15 years old while walking home from school in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Affleck described seeing two hooded teenagers approaching him and feeling an instinctive sense of danger. The youths intercepted him and demanded money at knifepoint. The situation de-escalated when Affleck recognized the attackers from local baseball games, leading to a mutual recognition that defused the tension.

Reflecting on the incident, Affleck noted the chilling aftermath: one of the individuals who robbed him was later convicted of murder involving a knife and sentenced to 20 years in prison. He expressed that he felt fortunate to have escaped the encounter without violence.