Matt Damon

Matthew Paige Damon (; born October 8, 1970) is an American actor, film producer, and screenwriter. Ranked among ''Forbes'' most bankable stars, the films in which he has appeared have collectively earned over $3.88 billion at the North American box office, making him one of the highest-grossing actors of all time. He has received various awards and nominations, including an Academy Award and two Golden Globe Awards, in addition to nominations for three British Academy Film Awards and seven Primetime Emmy Awards.

Damon began his acting career in the film '' Mystic Pizza'' (1988). He continued acting in ''Courage Under Fire'' (1996) and '' The Rainmaker'' (1997). He gained prominence in 1997 when he and Ben Affleck wrote and starred in ''Good Will Hunting'', which won them the Academy and Golden Globe awards for Best Screenplay. He established himself as a leading man by starring as Tom Ripley in ''The Talented Mr. Ripley'' (1999), Jason Bourne in the ''Bourne'' franchise (2002–2007; 2016), and con man Linus Caldwell in the ''Ocean's'' trilogy (2001–2007). Damon's other notable performances were in ''Saving Private Ryan'' (1998), ''Syriana'' (2005), ''The Departed'' (2006), ''The Informant!'' (2009), ''Invictus'' (2009), ''True Grit'' (2010), '' Contagion'' (2011), ''Ford v Ferrari'' (2019), '' Stillwater'' (2021), and '' The Last Duel'' (2021). He won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor for his leading role as an astronaut stranded on Mars in '' The Martian'' (2015).

He is also known for his performances in television, including his portrayal as Scott Thorson in the HBO biopic ''Behind the Candelabra'' (2013) for which he was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award. He has guest-starred on ''30 Rock'' in 2011 and ''Saturday Night Live'' in 2019. He also produced the reality series ''Project Greenlight'' (2001–2015) as well as the film '' Manchester by the Sea'' (2016).

Damon has performed voice-over work in both animated and documentary films, and has established two production companies with Affleck. He has been involved in charitable work with organizations including the ONE Campaign, H2O Africa Foundation, Feeding America, and Water.org.

Early life and education

Damon was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts on October 8, 1970, the second son of Kent Telfer Damon (1942–2017), a stockbroker, and Nancy Carlsson-Paige (b. 1946), an early childhood education professor at Lesley University. His father had English and Scottish ancestry, while his mother is of Finnish and Swedish descent; her family surname had been changed from Pajari to Paige. Damon and his family moved to Newton for two years. His parents divorced when he was two years old, and he and his brother returned with their mother to Cambridge, where they lived in a six-family communal house. His brother, Kyle, is a sculptor and artist. As a lonely teenager, he has said that he felt he did not belong. Due to his mother's "by the book" approach to child-rearing, he had a hard time defining his own identity.

Damon attended Cambridge Alternative School and Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, where he was a good student. He performed as an actor in several high school theater productions. He credited his drama teacher Gerry Speca as an important artistic influence, though his close friend and schoolmate Ben Affleck got the "biggest roles and longest speeches". He attended Harvard University, where he was a resident of Lowell House and a member of the class of 1992, but left before receiving his degree to take a lead role in the film '' Geronimo: An American Legend''. While at Harvard, Damon wrote an early treatment of the screenplay ''Good Will Hunting'' as an exercise for an English class, for which he later received an Academy Award. He was a member of The Delphic Club, one of Harvard's select Final Clubs. He was awarded the Harvard Arts Medal in 2013.

Career

1988–1999: Early work and breakthrough

Damon entered Harvard in 1988, where he appeared in student theater plays, such as ''Burn This'' and ''A... My Name is Alice''. Later, he made his film debut at the age of 18, with a single line of dialogue in the romantic comedy '' Mystic Pizza''. As a student at Harvard, he acted in small roles such as in the TNT original film ''Rising Son'' and the ensemble prep-school drama ''School Ties''. He left the university in 1992, a semester (12 credits) shy of completion of his Bachelor of Arts in English to feature in ''Geronimo: An American Legend'' in Los Angeles, erroneously expecting the movie to become a big success. Damon next appeared as an opiate-addicted soldier in 1996's ''Courage Under Fire'', for which he lost in 100 days on a self-prescribed diet and fitness regimen. ''Courage Under Fire'' gained him critical notice, when ''The Washington Post'' labeled his performance "impressive".

During the early 1990s, Damon and Affleck wrote ''Good Will Hunting'' (1997), a screenplay about a young mathematics genius, an extension of a screenplay he wrote for an assignment at Harvard, having integrated advice from director Rob Reiner, screenwriter William Goldman, and writer/director Kevin Smith. He asked Affleck to perform the scenes with him in front of the class and, when Damon later moved into Affleck's Los Angeles apartment, they began working on the script more seriously. The film, which they wrote mainly during improvisation sessions, was set partly in their hometown of Cambridge, and drew from their own experiences. They sold the screenplay to Castle Rock in 1994, but after a conflict with the company, they convinced Miramax to purchase the script. The film received critical praise; Quentin Curtis of ''The Daily Telegraph'' found "real wit and vigour, and some depth" in their writing and Emanuel Levy of ''Variety'' wrote of Damon's acting, " egives a charismatic performance in a demanding role that's bound to catapult him to stardom. Perfectly cast, he makes the aching, step-by-step transformation of Will realistic and credible." It received nine Academy Awards nominations, including Best Actor for Damon; he and Affleck won the Oscar and Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay.

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''.

Speaking of his "overnight success" through ''Good Will Hunting'', Damon said by that time he had been working in the cinema for 11 years, but still found the change "nearly indescribable—going from total obscurity to walking down a street in New York and having everybody turn and look". Before the film, Damon played the lead in the critically acclaimed drama '' The Rainmaker'' (1997), where he was recognized by the ''Los Angeles Times'' as "a talented young actor on the brink of stardom." For the role, Damon regained most of the weight he had lost for ''Courage Under Fire''. After meeting Damon on the set of ''Good Will Hunting'', director Steven Spielberg cast him in the brief title role in the 1998 World War II film ''Saving Private Ryan''. He co-starred with Edward Norton in the 1998 poker film ''Rounders'', where he plays a reformed gambler in law school who must return to playing big stakes poker to help a friend pay off loan sharks. Despite meager earnings at the box-office, it is now considered one of the greatest poker movies of all time.

Damon then portrayed antihero Tom Ripley in ''The Talented Mr. Ripley'' (1999), a role for which he lost . Damon said that he wanted to display his character's humanity and honesty on screen despite his criminal actions. An adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's 1955 novel of same name, the film costarred Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Cate Blanchett, and received praise from critics. "Damon outstandingly conveys his character's slide from innocent enthusiasm into cold calculation", according to ''Variety'' magazine. He played a fallen angel who discusses pop culture as intellectual subject matter with Affleck in ''Dogma'' (1999). The film received generally positive reviews, but proved controversial among religious groups who deemed it blasphemous.

2000–2008: Worldwide recognition

In 2000, along with Ben Affleck and producers Chris Moore and Sean Bailey, Damon founded the production company LivePlanet, through which the four created the Emmy-nominated documentary series ''Project Greenlight'' to find and fund worthwhile film projects from novice filmmakers. The company produced and founded the short-lived mystery-hybrid series ''Push, Nevada'', among other projects.

Damon's attempts at leading characters in romantic dramas such as 2000's '' All the Pretty Horses'' and ''The Legend of Bagger Vance'' were commercially and critically unsuccessful. ''Variety'' said of his work in ''All the Pretty Horses'': "amonjust doesn't quite seem like a young man who's spent his life amidst the dust and dung of a Texas cattle ranch. Nor does he strike any sparks with enelopeCruz." He was similarly deemed "uncomfortable being the center" of Robert Redford's ''The Legend of Bagger Vance'' by Peter Rainer of '' New York'' magazine.

During this period, Damon joined two lucrative film series—''Ocean's Trilogy'' (2001–2007) and ''Bourne'' (2002–2016)—and produced the television series ''Project Greenlight'' (2001–2005, 2015). In the former's first installment, Steven Soderbergh's 2001 ensemble film ''Ocean's Eleven'', which is a remake of the Rat Pack's ''Ocean's 11'' (1960), he co-starred as thief Linus Caldwell. The role was originally meant for Mark Wahlberg, who refused it in favor of other projects. The film was successful at the box-office, grossing $450 million from a budget of $83 million. Damon, alongside Affleck and others, produced the documentary series ''Project Greenlight'', aired on HBO and later Bravo, which helps newcomers develop their first film. The series was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Reality Program in 2002, 2004 and 2005. Damon later said that he and Affleck felt proud that the show helped launch the careers of several directors; Damon later served as the executive producer of a number of projects directed by the winners of the show.

Damon began 2002 with writing and starring in '' Gerry'', a drama about two friends who forget to bring water and food when they go hiking in a desert. The reviews for the film were generally positive, but it was a box-office failure. He then played amnesiac assassin Jason Bourne in Doug Liman's action thriller '' The Bourne Identity'' (2002). Liman considered several actors for the role, before he cast Damon. Damon insisted on performing many of the stunts himself, undergoing three months of extensive training in stunt work, the use of weapons, boxing, and eskrima.'The Birth of the Bourne Identity' DVD Making of Documentary (2003). Damon said that before ''The Bourne Identity'' he was jobless for six months, and many of his films during that period under-performed at the box-office. He doubted the film's financial prospects, but it proved a commercial success. Reviews for the film were also positive; Roger Ebert praised it for its ability to absorb the viewer in its "spycraft" and "Damon's ability to be focused and sincere". For his role, ''Entertainment Weekly'' named Damon among "the decade's best mixer of brawn and brains."

Damon voiced the role of Spirit in the animated film '' Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron'' (2002) and later played a conjoined twin in '' Stuck on You'' (2003), which received a mixed critical reception. His major releases in 2004 included starring roles in the sequels ''The Bourne Supremacy'' and ''Ocean's Twelve''. Both films earned more than $280 million at the box-office. In a review for ''The Bourne Supremacy'', BBC
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