Actors Ben Affleck and Matt Damon have always been close but it turns out the two buddies are actually distant cousins.

The New England Historic Genealogical Society revealed that the good friends are actually 10th cousins once removed. Affleck and Damon share a common 10th great-grandfather, William Knowlton of Ipswich. Ipsich was a bricklayer who died in 1655.

“We suspected they might be related since both of them had ancestry going back to colonial New England,” said geneologist Chris Child, who did the research along with colleague Rhonda McClure .

Matt and Ben are related on their fathers’ side, said McClure.

Share This Story: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • bodytext
  • Mixx
  • description
  • Reddit
  • Spurl
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati
  • TwitThis