Matt Damon

Matthew Paige Damon (born October 8, 1970) is an American actor, film producer, and screenwriter.

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, Damon 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".

Damon began his acting career in the film Mystic Pizza (1988).

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.

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.

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 left the school in 1992, a semester (12 credits) shy of completing 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.

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, "[he] gives 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.

Damon next appeared as an opiate-addicted soldier in 1996's Courage Under Fire, for which he lost 40 lb 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".

He gained prominence in 1997 when he and Ben Affleck wrote and starred in Good Will Hunting, which won them the Academy Award and Golden Globe for Best Screenplay.

Damon's other notable roles were in Saving Private Ryan (1998), Syriana (2005), The Departed (2006), The Informant!, Invictus (both 2009), True Grit (2010), Contagion (2011), Ford v Ferrari (2019), Stillwater, The Last Duel (both 2021), Air, and Oppenheimer (both 2023), the last of which is his highest-grossing feature.

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).

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 as well as 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.

Ranked among Forbes' most bankable stars in 2007, 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.

He appeared on 30 Rock in 2011 and Saturday Night Live in 2019.

On television, Damon portrayed Scott Thorson in the HBO biopic Behind the Candelabra (2013), for which he was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award.

He was awarded the Harvard Arts Medal in 2013.

He won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor for playing an astronaut stranded on Mars in The Martian (2015).