Matthew Paige "Matt" Damon (born October 8, 1970) is an American actor, screenwriter, and philanthropist whose career was launched following the success of the film Good Will Hunting (1997), from a screenplay he co-wrote with friend Ben Affleck. The pair won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and the Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay for their work and Damon garnered multiple Best Actor nominations, including the Academy Award, for his lead performance in the film.
Damon has since starred in commercially successful films such as Saving Private Ryan (1998), the Ocean's trilogy, and the Bourne series, while also gaining critical acclaim for his performances in dramas such as Syriana (2005), The Good Shepherd (2006), and The Departed (2006). He garnered a Golden Globe nomination for portraying the title character in The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) and was nominated for an Academy Award as a supporting actor in Invictus (2009). He is one of the top forty highest grossing actors of all time. In 2007, Damon received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and was named Sexiest Man Alive by People magazine.
Damon has been actively involved in charitable work, including the ONE Campaign, H2O Africa Foundation, and Water.org.
Matt Damon was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the son of Kent Telfer Damon, a stockbroker, and Nancy Carlsson-Paige, an early childhood education professor at Lesley University. Damon is of Scottish, English, Finnish, and Swedish ancestry, and is a distant cousin of actors Ben Affleck and Casey Affleck. He has a brother, Kyle, who is an accomplished sculptor and artist. He and his family moved to Newton and lived there for two years. After his parents divorced, Damon and his brother moved with their mother back to Cambridge, where they lived in a six-family communal house. Damon grew up near Ben Affleck, a close friend since childhood and collaborator on several films, and historian and author Howard Zinn, whose biographical film You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train and audio version of A People's History of the United States Damon later narrated.
Damon took to role-playing as a child partly because his mother raised him "by the book," which made him feel as though "you couldn't define yourself, because you already had been defined by her." He attended Cambridge Alternative School (now Graham & Parks) and then Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, where he was a disciplined student but had a "terrifying" first two years due to his short height at the time. As a lonely adolescent, Damon has described feeling "such pain in wanting to belong somewhere and not belonging." Damon performed as an actor in several high school theater productions; he has credited his drama teacher at Rindge and Latin, Gerry Speca, as an important artistic influence, even though Damon recalls that, "Mr. Speca always seemed to trust Ben [Affleck] with the biggest roles and longest speeches."
Damon attended Harvard University from 1988 to 1992 but did not graduate. While at Harvard, he studied English and lived in Lowell House. He took part in student theater, appearing in plays such as Burn This in Winthrop House and A... My Name is Alice (in one of the three male roles usually performed by women). Damon dropped out of the university to pursue his acting career in Los Angeles because he mistakenly expected Geronimo: An American Legend to become a big success. "By the time I figured out I had made the wrong decision, it was too late. I was living out here with a bunch of actors, and we were all scrambling to make ends meet," Damon has said.
Damon's first film role came in 1988 when he was eighteen, with a single line of dialogue in the romantic comedy Mystic Pizza. As a student at Harvard University, he continued to pursue acting and performed small roles in projects such as the TNT original film Rising Son and the ensemble prep-school drama School Ties. In 1992, he landed a big part in Geronimo: An American Legend with Gene Hackman and Jason Patric. Four years later, he auditioned for a small role in Cutthroat Island, but was turned away. Damon next appeared as an opiate-addicted soldier in 1996's Courage Under Fire. He was required to lose 40 pounds (18 kg) in 100 days (for only two days of filming). After following a self-prescribed diet and fitness regimen to lose the weight, Damon was told after filming that he was fortunate his heart did not shrink. He took medication for several years afterwards to correct the stress inflicted on his adrenal gland. Courage Under Fire gained him some critical notice, as The Washington Post labeled his performance "impressive;" Damon has stated that it was worthwhile to risk his health in order to properly portray his character and show the industry how committed he was to his work as an actor.
During the early 1990s, Damon and Affleck wrote a screenplay about a young math genius, which they then pitched around Hollywood for a long time. Receiving advice from director Rob Reiner, screenwriter William Goldman, and their friend writer/director Kevin Smith, the two made changes to the script. The script eventually became Good Will Hunting (1997), and received nine Academy Awards nominations, earning Damon and Affleck Oscars for Best Original Screenplay. Damon was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for the same film, which also netted an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for co-star Robin Williams. He and Affleck were each paid salaries of $600,000, while the film grossed over $225 million at the worldwide box office. The two later parodied their roles from the film in Kevin Smith's 2001 movie Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.
Also in 1997, Damon was the lead in the critically acclaimed drama The Rainmaker, where he was recognized by the Los Angeles Times as "a talented young actor on the brink of stardom." After meeting Damon on the set of Good Will Hunting, director Steven Spielberg cast Damon as the titular character in the 1998 World War II film Saving Private Ryan.
Damon has become known for choosing a wide variety of film roles, from his portrayal of Patricia Highsmith's anti-hero Tom Ripley in The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) to a fallen angel who discusses pop culture as intellectual subject matter with Affleck in Dogma (1999); from a conjoined twin in Stuck on You (2003), which got a mixed critical reception, to the low budget experimental film Gerry (2002), which he co-wrote with Casey Affleck and Gus Van Sant. Damon garnered generally positive critical reaction for his Golden Globe-nominated portrayal of Ripley, with Variety stating, "Damon outstandingly conveys his character's slide from innocent enthusiasm into cold calculation."
Damon has since starred in commercially successful films such as Saving Private Ryan (1998), the Ocean's trilogy, and the Bourne series, while also gaining critical acclaim for his performances in dramas such as Syriana (2005), The Good Shepherd (2006), and The Departed (2006). He garnered a Golden Globe nomination for portraying the title character in The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) and was nominated for an Academy Award as a supporting actor in Invictus (2009). He is one of the top forty highest grossing actors of all time. In 2007, Damon received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and was named Sexiest Man Alive by People magazine.
Damon has been actively involved in charitable work, including the ONE Campaign, H2O Africa Foundation, and Water.org.
Matt Damon was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the son of Kent Telfer Damon, a stockbroker, and Nancy Carlsson-Paige, an early childhood education professor at Lesley University. Damon is of Scottish, English, Finnish, and Swedish ancestry, and is a distant cousin of actors Ben Affleck and Casey Affleck. He has a brother, Kyle, who is an accomplished sculptor and artist. He and his family moved to Newton and lived there for two years. After his parents divorced, Damon and his brother moved with their mother back to Cambridge, where they lived in a six-family communal house. Damon grew up near Ben Affleck, a close friend since childhood and collaborator on several films, and historian and author Howard Zinn, whose biographical film You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train and audio version of A People's History of the United States Damon later narrated.
Damon took to role-playing as a child partly because his mother raised him "by the book," which made him feel as though "you couldn't define yourself, because you already had been defined by her." He attended Cambridge Alternative School (now Graham & Parks) and then Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, where he was a disciplined student but had a "terrifying" first two years due to his short height at the time. As a lonely adolescent, Damon has described feeling "such pain in wanting to belong somewhere and not belonging." Damon performed as an actor in several high school theater productions; he has credited his drama teacher at Rindge and Latin, Gerry Speca, as an important artistic influence, even though Damon recalls that, "Mr. Speca always seemed to trust Ben [Affleck] with the biggest roles and longest speeches."
Damon attended Harvard University from 1988 to 1992 but did not graduate. While at Harvard, he studied English and lived in Lowell House. He took part in student theater, appearing in plays such as Burn This in Winthrop House and A... My Name is Alice (in one of the three male roles usually performed by women). Damon dropped out of the university to pursue his acting career in Los Angeles because he mistakenly expected Geronimo: An American Legend to become a big success. "By the time I figured out I had made the wrong decision, it was too late. I was living out here with a bunch of actors, and we were all scrambling to make ends meet," Damon has said.
Damon's first film role came in 1988 when he was eighteen, with a single line of dialogue in the romantic comedy Mystic Pizza. As a student at Harvard University, he continued to pursue acting and performed small roles in projects such as the TNT original film Rising Son and the ensemble prep-school drama School Ties. In 1992, he landed a big part in Geronimo: An American Legend with Gene Hackman and Jason Patric. Four years later, he auditioned for a small role in Cutthroat Island, but was turned away. Damon next appeared as an opiate-addicted soldier in 1996's Courage Under Fire. He was required to lose 40 pounds (18 kg) in 100 days (for only two days of filming). After following a self-prescribed diet and fitness regimen to lose the weight, Damon was told after filming that he was fortunate his heart did not shrink. He took medication for several years afterwards to correct the stress inflicted on his adrenal gland. Courage Under Fire gained him some critical notice, as The Washington Post labeled his performance "impressive;" Damon has stated that it was worthwhile to risk his health in order to properly portray his character and show the industry how committed he was to his work as an actor.
During the early 1990s, Damon and Affleck wrote a screenplay about a young math genius, which they then pitched around Hollywood for a long time. Receiving advice from director Rob Reiner, screenwriter William Goldman, and their friend writer/director Kevin Smith, the two made changes to the script. The script eventually became Good Will Hunting (1997), and received nine Academy Awards nominations, earning Damon and Affleck Oscars for Best Original Screenplay. Damon was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for the same film, which also netted an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for co-star Robin Williams. He and Affleck were each paid salaries of $600,000, while the film grossed over $225 million at the worldwide box office. The two later parodied their roles from the film in Kevin Smith's 2001 movie Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.
Also in 1997, Damon was the lead in the critically acclaimed drama The Rainmaker, where he was recognized by the Los Angeles Times as "a talented young actor on the brink of stardom." After meeting Damon on the set of Good Will Hunting, director Steven Spielberg cast Damon as the titular character in the 1998 World War II film Saving Private Ryan.
Damon has become known for choosing a wide variety of film roles, from his portrayal of Patricia Highsmith's anti-hero Tom Ripley in The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) to a fallen angel who discusses pop culture as intellectual subject matter with Affleck in Dogma (1999); from a conjoined twin in Stuck on You (2003), which got a mixed critical reception, to the low budget experimental film Gerry (2002), which he co-wrote with Casey Affleck and Gus Van Sant. Damon garnered generally positive critical reaction for his Golden Globe-nominated portrayal of Ripley, with Variety stating, "Damon outstandingly conveys his character's slide from innocent enthusiasm into cold calculation."
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