Matt Damon

Actor

• Born: October 8, 1970
• Place of Birth: Cambridge, Massachusetts

• Education: Harvard University

Matt Damon is an actor, producer, and screenwriter best known for his films Good Will Hunting (1997), the Jason Bourne series (2002–16), The Departed (2006), The Martian (2015), and Oppenheimer (2023). He has received numerous awards for his work, including the Academy Award for best original screenplay for Good Will Hunting as well as acting awards and nominations from the Golden Globes and Screen Actors Guild.

Throughout his career, Damon has used the fame that blockbuster films such as Ocean’s Eleven (2001) have brought him in order to gain the creative freedom to pursue more independent projects. From 2001 to 2005, he coproduced the HBO television series Project Greenlight (2001–15), which helped first-time filmmakers direct a feature film. The series was nominated for multiple Primetime Emmy Awards for outstanding reality program.

Damon starred in several lower-budget features, such as Chasing Amy (1997) and Rounders (1998), before gaining worldwide attention as an action star with the hit film The Bourne Identity. This film spawned the sequels The Bourne Supremacy (2004) and The Bourne Ultimatum (2007). Other major films include The Departed (2006), Green Zone (2010), and The Adjustment Bureau (2011). He showed his more comedic side with appearances in the sitcom 30 Rock in 2010 and 2011.

Damon has produced the documentaries Running the Sahara (2007), The People Speak (2009), and The People Speak UK (2010), and he has done extensive humanitarian work. In the spring of 2006, he founded the H2O African Foundation to raise awareness about the issues surrounding clean drinking water in Africa. He also works with organizations that help prevent mass human atrocities and help improve the lives of children around the world.

Background

Matthew Paige Damon was born on October 8, 1970, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to stockbroker Kent Telfer Damon and Nancy Carlsson-Paige, who taught early childhood education at Lesley University in Boston, Massachusetts. His older brother Kyle is a sculptor. His family lived in the upper-class town of Newton, Massachusetts, until his parents divorced in 1973. Damon and his brother went to live with their mother in Cambridge.

Damon was a bright student who showed an interest in acting at an early age. He attended the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, a public high school in Cambridge. He and fellow student Ben Affleck became best friends, and the two would later pursue an acting career together. Damon participated in local theater productions with the encouragement of his drama teacher, Gerry Speca, and also played Little League, much to the delight of his baseball-obsessed father.

When he was eighteen years old, Damon decided to head to New York with Affleck to audition for films. They both tried out for the film Mystic Pizza (1988), and Damon was given one line in the film. Afterward, he returned to Massachusetts to continue his education.

Thanks to his good grades and discipline as a student, Damon got into Harvard University in Cambridge, where he studied English literature. His longing to become an actor, however, drew him away from academics. He participated in student theater at Harvard and worked as an extra in local films. He was cast in the short-lived television show Rising Son (1990) and starred in the film School Ties (1992) alongside Affleck.

Damon eventually dropped out of Harvard just twelve credits short of his degree, and he moved with Affleck to Los Angeles, California, to pursue acting full-time. Damon’s parents disapproved of his choice and did not support it. What drew him away was the prospect of receiving his big break in the film Geronimo: An American Legend (1993). Despite the presence of famous actors such as Gene Hackman, Geronimo did poorly at the box office. Damon then landed small roles in the films The Good Old Boys (1995) and Glory Daze (1995). These films also failed to provide Damon with the big break he desired. During this period, Damon was sharing an apartment in Los Angeles with Affleck and Affleck’s younger brother, Casey.

The three actors were all becoming increasingly discouraged as they struggled to make it in Hollywood. Damon turned down a role in the western film The Quick and the Dead (1995) so that he and Affleck could refine a script Damon had begun working on in a Harvard English class. This script would become the film Good Will Hunting (1997).

Film Career

Damon originally intended his breakthrough film, Good Will Hunting, to be a thriller, but after one potential buyer convinced him to develop it into a drama focused on the relationship between two characters, Damon found a production company willing to purchase the script. Castle Rock Entertainment was eager to buy it, but the company refused to allow Damon and Affleck to star in the film. They preferred to cast better-known actors. Discouraged, Affleck took the script to his filmmaking friend Kevin Smith, who showed it to producer Harvey Weinstein at Miramax Films.

While the script was still being shopped around, Damon’s profile in Hollywood was raised thanks to a role in the political drama Courage Under Fire (1996). Damon played a drug addict and lost forty pounds for the role. He furthered his presence in the industry with a starring role in the thriller The Rainmaker (1997). Weinstein finally offered to make Good Will Hunting and allowed Damon and Affleck to star. Filmmaker Gus Van Sant was selected as the director.

In the film, Damon plays an intellectually brilliant janitor who is seeking direction in life. The film was released on December 5, 1997, and received a great deal of critical praise. It was a success at the box office as well, taking in over $225 million worldwide. The film was nominated for nine Academy Awards, including the award for best actor for Damon. Affleck and Damon shared the award for best original screenplay.

Before Good Will Hunting was even released, Damon was cast in the war epic Saving Private Ryan (1998), which was directed by renowned filmmaker Steven Spielberg. Damon played the titular Private Ryan, who is rescued by a squad led by Captain John Miller, played by Tom Hanks. The film became one of the biggest hits of 1998 and received numerous awards and nominations. Damon himself was nominated for Actor of the Year at the London Critics Circle Film Awards. Damon finished 1998 with a starring role in Rounders (1998), another financial success.

Damon starred alongside Affleck in the comedy Dogma (1999) before showing off his darker side in The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999). Damon plays Tom Ripley, a young man who becomes obsessed with his friend and then kills him in order to take his place. The film was a critical success, and Damon was nominated for the Golden Globe for best actor.

Next, Damon starred in the ensemble comedy Ocean’s Eleven (2001), which was a blockbuster hit. He would also appear in the sequels Ocean’s Twelve (2004) and Ocean’s Thirteen (2007). Damon costarred alongside George Clooney in the Ocean's franchise, as well as in the acclaimed political thriller Syriana (2005).

Damon then began work as coproducer of Project Greenlight (2001–15), a competitive reality show in which the winner would direct a feature film. He received an Emmy nomination for his work on the show.

Damon’s career saw another breakthrough when he starred in the action thriller The Bourne Identity (2002). The film was a huge success. Two sequels followed, The Bourne Supremacy (2004) and The Bourne Ultimatum (2007); Damon did not appear in the fourth film in the series, The Bourne Legacy (2012). Several other films followed, some not as successful, such as the comedies Stuck on You (2003) and Jersey Girl (2004).

Damon was praised for his role in the crime drama The Departed (2006), in which he plays a crooked Boston cop. Damon shared a Screen Actors Guild (SAG) nomination for best cast for the film. Damon was nominated for acting awards at both the Golden Globes and Academy Awards in 2009 for the comedy The Informant! (2009) and the political drama Invictus (2009), which was directed by Clint Eastwood.

Damon produced the documentaries Running the Sahara (2007), The People Speak (2009), and The People Speak UK (2010) before returning to action films with the thriller Green Zone (2010). He reunited with Eastwood for the supernatural drama Hereafter (2010) and then appeared on the hit television sitcom 30 Rock (2010–11) as a charming airplane pilot. He starred in a number of films in 2011, including The Adjustment Bureau (2011) and Contagion (2011).

Damon reunited with director Van Sant for the drama Promised Land (2012), for which he wrote the screenplay. He then received Emmy, Golden Globe, and SAG nominations for his role in the television biopic Behind the Candelabra (2013). Damon next starred in the big-budget science-fiction film Elysium (2013), which received mixed reviews. He started off 2014 with the poorly received historical war drama The Monuments Men before taking a small role in the space adventure Interstellar (2014). For his starring role in Ridley Scott's adaptation of Andy Weir's novel The Martian (2015), Damon received an Oscar nod and a Golden Globe for best actor.

Damon kept up a rapid pace of output in the late 2010s. Not only did he reprise the Bourne part in Jason Bourne and appear in The Great Wall in 2016, but Damon also produced the Oscar-nominated film Manchester by the Sea and the daily interactive reality series The Runner. The following year, he starred in Clooney's dark comedy Suburbicon and the satire Downsizing and executive-produced the documentary Bending the Arc about medical work in Haiti. In 2019 Damon appeared alongside Ben Affleck and Rosario Dawson in the buddy comedy Jay & Silent Bob Reboot and played race-car designer Carroll Shelby in the biopic Ford v Ferrari. That same year, he received another Emmy nomination for guest hosting Saturday Night Live.

Damon continued to pursue multiple projects in the 2020s. In 2021, he starred in the drama Stillwater and starred in and produced The Last Duel, a historical drama directed by Ridley Scott, which Damon also cowrote with Ben Affleck. In 2022, he joined the Marvel Universe in Thor: Love and Thunder, and in 2023, he produced and starred in Air, which detailed the story of the athletic company Nike.

In 2023, Damon starred as General Leslie R. Groves in the Christopher Nolan biopic Oppenheimer. Groves played an integral part in the development of the atomic bomb in the 1940s. Oppenheimer went on to win several Academy Awards, including the Oscar for Best Picture. Damon followed this with the 2024 comedy The Instigators, which he also co-produced with Affleck.

Impact

Damon has gone from struggling actor to one of the biggest stars in contemporary film. He has balanced his career with intimate, independent films and big-budget action thrillers. After becoming discouraged with trying to find work in Hollywood, Damon wrote his own role in Good Will Hunting, one of the most successful independent films of all time, which earned him a best original screenplay Academy Award at the age of twenty-eight. Damon has been nominated for and won numerous other awards, including Golden Globes, Emmy Awards, and Screen Actors Guild Awards. On January 25, 2007, he received his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Damon has made good use of his fame and fortune by being involved with various charitable organizations. He has helped raise awareness for many causes, including the H2O Africa Foundation, which works with numerous other organizations to raise awareness about the lack of clean drinking water in Africa. Damon is involved with the Not On Our Watch Project to help gather resources to prevent mass human killings.

Bibliography

Diamond, Maxine, and Harriet Hemmings. Matt Damon: A Biography. New York: Pocket, 1998. Print.

Horn, John. "The Intricate Birth of ‘The Bourne Legacy.’" Los Angeles Times, 3 Aug. 2012, www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-xpm-2012-aug-03-la-et-mn-ca-bourne-20120805-story.html. Accessed 2 Oct. 2024.

"Matt Damon." IMDb, www.imdb.com/name/nm0000354/. Accessed 2 Oct. 2024.

McKenna, Ian. "Matt Damon’s Most Challenging Role: Tackling the Global Water Crisis." CNN, 13 Jan. 2014, www.cnn.com/2014/01/13/world/iyw-matt-damon/index.html. Accessed 2 Oct. 2024.

Thomas, Anjali. "Matt Damon Tries to Get Clean Water and Toilets for India’s Poor." New York Times, 29 Aug. 2013, archive.nytimes.com/india.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/29/matt-damon-tries-to-get-clean-water-and-toilets-for-indias-poor/. Accessed 2 Oct. 2024.