Casey Affleck and Michelle Williams Receive SBIFF's Cinema Vanguard Award

Last night, the 32nd Santa Barbara International Film Festival honored Manchester by the Sea's Michelle Williams and Casey Affleck with the Cinema Vanguard Award. Fans gathered at The Arlington Theatre where The Hollywood Reporter's Scott Fienberg moderated a candid and revealing conversation with the actors about the trajectory of their careers and the making of the film.

Following a SUPER BOWL victory by the New England Patriots, an enthusiastic Affleck shared how Patty Collins and Gerry Speca influenced his early career. Collins, a local casting director in Cambridge, MA, would cast him and his brother Ben Affleck as extras when films came into town, such as Leonard Nimoy's The Good Mother. Speca was Affleck's high school drama teacher whom he gives credit to for any success that he's had thus far.

Williams poignantly shared the long road of her career beginning at the age of fourteen and embracing early credits such as Baywatch. She went on to discuss her experience in her breakout TV role as Jen Lindley in the ever-popular Dawson's Creek.

"It was really tough to be a teenager and to have a forming sense of identity," she recalled about her role. "To be enmeshed with this character that I was playing and to have my identity growing around her identity and to have people judge me based on that could hurt my feelings at times. I'm super grateful to the show for a lot of reasons. People have fond memories of it and it gave me so much practice."

The two then shared their most challenging scenes in Manchester by the Sea. Affleck revealed that there were enough of them in the film that it undercut the dread of doing any one scene. Being such a fan of Affleck's, Williams gushed about how honest his work is. She was nervous about every tiny interaction with him.

The evening concluded when the film's director, Kenneth Lonergan, presented the Cinema Vanguard Awards to the co-stars.

"There are a couple of things that you may not be able to tell about Casey and Michelle this evening," said Lonergan. "You might notice that they are both on the quiet side. You wouldn't know to look at them that when they go to work they are capable of this incredible eruption of emotion, specificity, transformation and humor."

Photo courtesy Santa Barbara International Film Festival

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