{"id":794181,"date":"2026-07-30T22:15:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T22:15:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/794181\/"},"modified":"2026-07-30T22:15:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T22:15:10","slug":"ben-affleck-wins-1-million-for-charity-on-who-wants-to-be-a-millionaire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/794181\/","title":{"rendered":"Ben Affleck wins $1 million for charity on \u2018Who Wants To Be a Millionaire\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ben Affleck was overcome with glee the moment he won \u201cWho Wants To Be a Millionaire,\u201d jumping up to hug his partner, \u201cJeopardy!\u201d champion Jamie Ding.<\/p>\n

Affleck and Ding made it to the final round on Wednesday\u2019s episode of the ABC game show, hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, where they faced a question about turkeys pardoned by U.S. presidents. The duo had to deduce which names did not belong to pardoned turkeys.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo we\u2019re gonna say D, Spaghetti and Meatball?\u201d Ding said after deliberations.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah,\u201d Affleck nodded.<\/p>\n

It took a beat before the answer was revealed, leaving Affleck and Ding looking stressed about their choice. But the chime indicating they chose correctly rang out and both men jumped to their feet for an excited hug.<\/p>\n

\"BenBen Affleck and Jamie Ding in “Who Wants To Be a Millionaire.”Eric McCandless \/ Disney<\/p>\n

The two men were playing for charity. Their prize winnings will be donated to the Eastern Congo Initiative, a nonprofit co-founded by Affleck in 2010 to support Congolese communities.<\/p>\n

Affleck spoke on the game show about how he has spent the last 15 years working with the organization.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd right now, of course, as I\u2019m sure most people know, there\u2019s an Ebola crisis there,\u201d Affleck said. \u201cAnd so this is in large part designed to try to relieve that, contain the spread of Ebola.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Oscar-winning actor, director and writer was lucky to have Ding as a partner, as the former \u201cJeopardy!\u201d contestant had a historic run on that trivia show. Ding managed a 31-game streak, landing fifth on the list of all-time \u201cJeopardy!\u201d winners.<\/p>\n

Current host Ken Jennings still holds the top spot with 74 consecutive wins.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unclear when \u201cWho Wants To Be a Millionaire\u201d was filmed, but Affleck\u2019s win was aired a year after his best friend, Matt Damon, appeared on the show<\/a>. The \u201cGood Will Hunting\u201d co-writer won $1 million for his own charity, Water.org, after being paired up with Jennings.<\/p>\n

Affleck\u2019s episode also aired a week after news broke that his mother died following a pancreatic cancer diagnosis. Christopher Affleck, or Chris, died on June 2, but her obituary appeared in The Boston Globe last week<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It said that her greatest wish was to see her grandson\u2019s high school graduation, which she attended two days before her death.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ben Affleck was overcome with glee the moment he won \u201cWho Wants To Be a Millionaire,\u201d jumping up…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":794182,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[236,88],"class_list":["post-794181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=794181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794181\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/794182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=794181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=794181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=794181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}