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Matthew Paige "Matt" Damon (/ˈdeɪmən/; born October 8, 1970)[1] is an American actor, voice actor, screenwriter, producer, and philanthropist. His career was launched with the success of his and Ben Affleck's award-winning screenplay for Good Will Hunting (1997), for which he also received a number of Best Actor nominations. Growing steadily in popularity since then, he is now among Forbes magazine's most bankable stars[2] and one of the top-40 highest-grossing actors of all time.[3][nb 1]

Damon has become known for his versatility,[5] such as the action figure in the Bourne film series, the anti-hero in The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), a fallen angel in Dogma (1999), and a conjoined twin in Stuck on You (2003). Among his commercially successful films are Saving Private Ryan (1998), the Ocean's trilogy, and the first three films of the Bourne film series . He won critical acclaim for his performances in dramas such as Syriana (2005), The Good Shepherd (2006), and The Departed (2006). Among his critically unsuccessful films are All the Pretty Horses and The Legend of Bagger Vance, made in 2000.

Damon has also performed voice-over work and established several production companies. He has won multiple awards for his film performances and, 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, Feeding America, and Water.org. With his wife, Luciana Bozán Barroso, Damon has three daughters and a stepdaughter from Barroso's prior marriage.

Early life

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Damon was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the second son to Kent Telfer Damon (born 1942), a stockbroker, and Nancy Carlsson-Paige (born 1944), an early childhood education professor at Lesley University.[6][7] Damon and his family moved to Newton for two years. After his parents divorced, Damon and his brother returned with their mother to Cambridge,[7][8] where they lived in a six-family communal house.[9][10] His brother Kyle is now an accomplished sculptor and artist.[7][11]

As a lonely adolescent, Damon has said that he didn't feel that he belonged.[9] Due to his mother's "by the book"[9] approach to child-rearing, he didn't feel he had the ability to define his own sense of self, and as a result gravitated to role-playing.[9] He attended Cambridge Alternative School (now Graham and Parks) and then Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, where he was a good student,[12] but had a "terrifying" first two years due to his short stature.[13] Damon performed as an actor in several high school theater productions.[7] He credited his drama teacher, Gerry Speca, as an important artistic influence, even though Ben Affleck,[12][nb 2] his good friend and schoolmate,[15] got the "biggest roles and longest speeches".[12][nb 3]

Damon attended Harvard University from 1988 to 1992,[17][nb 4] where he appeared in student theater plays, such as Burn This in Winthrop House and A... My Name is Alice.[19][20] He left the university a semester - 12 credits - shy of completion of his Bachelor of Arts in English to feature in Geronimo: An American Legend[19][21] in Los Angeles, mistakenly expecting the movie to become a big success.[19] "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," he has said.[22]

Acting career

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Early years: 1988–1996

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Damon made his acting debut in 1988 at the age of 18, with a single line of dialogue in the romantic comedy Mystic Pizza.[23] As a student at Harvard University, he acted in small roles such as in the TNT original film Rising Son and the ensemble prep-school drama School Ties.[24] In 1992, he landed a big part in Geronimo: An American Legend.[24] Damon next appeared as an opiate-addicted soldier in 1996's Courage Under Fire, for which he lost 40 pounds (18 kg) in 100 days[25][23] on a self-prescribed diet and fitness regimen. He took medication for a year and a half afterwards to correct the stress inflicted on his adrenal gland, and was told he was lucky his heart did not shrink. Courage Under Fire gained him critical notice, when the The Washington Post labeled his performance "impressive".[26]

Breakthrough roles: 1997–2000

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Matt Damon in Rome
with paparazzo Rino Barillari (1999)

During the early 1990s, Damon and Affleck wrote Good Will Hunting (1997), a screenplay about a young math genius, with advice during the process from director Rob Reiner, screenwriter William Goldman, and writer/director Kevin Smith.[27] It received nine Academy Awards nominations, earning Damon and Affleck Oscars [28][29] and Golden Globes for Best Screenplay.[30] 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.[28] He and Affleck were each paid salaries of $600,000, while the film grossed over $225 million at the worldwide box office.[31][32] The two later parodied their roles from the film in Kevin Smith's 2001 movie Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.[33]

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."[34] 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.[35]

Hollywood star: 2001–2007

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Six actors, all but one wearing a leather jacket, are photographed on a stage with a blue curtain as a backdrop.
Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Damon, Andy García, Julia Roberts (the cast of Ocean's Eleven), with director Steven Soderbergh in December 2001

From 2001 to 2007, Damon gained wider international recognition as part of two major film franchises. He co-starred as thief Linus Caldwell in Steven Soderbergh's 2001 film Ocean's Eleven, a remake of the Rat Pack's 1960 film of the same name; the successful crime dramedy spawned two sequels, Ocean's Twelve (2004) and Ocean's Thirteen (2007).[23] He played amnesiac assassin Jason Bourne/David Webb in the hit action thrillers The Bourne Identity (2002), The Bourne Supremacy (2004), and The Bourne Ultimatum (2007),[23] for which Entertainment Weekly named Damon, unpredictibly, among "the decade's best mixer of brawn and brains."[36]

Photo of Damon and De Niro, each wearing a tuxedo jacket and a dark blue shirt.
Damon and Robert De Niro at Berlin in February 2007 for the premiere of The Good Shepherd

Damon played a fictionalized version of Wilhelm Grimm in Terry Gilliam's fantasy adventure The Brothers Grimm (2005), which was a critically panned commercial failure;[31] The Washington Post concluded, "Damon, constantly flashing his newscaster's teeth and flaunting a fake, 'Masterpiece Theatre' dialect, comes across like someone who got lost on the way to an audition for a high school production of The Pirates of Penzance."[37] Later that year, he appeared as an energy analyst in Syriana.[38]

In 2006, Damon joined Robert De Niro in The Good Shepherd as a career CIA officer, and played an undercover mobster working for the Massachusetts State Police in Martin Scorsese's The Departed, a remake of the Hong Kong police thriller Infernal Affairs.[23] Assessing his work in the two films, Manohla Dargis of The New York Times wrote that Damon has the unique "ability to recede into a film while also being fully present, a recessed intensity, that distinguishes how he holds the screen."[5] The Departed has a score of 92% on Rotten Tomatoes, and critical reception was very good.[39] Box Office Mojo ranked it seventh amongst his films.[31] According to Forbes in August 2007, Damon was the most bankable star of the actors reviewed, his last three films at that time averaged US$29 at the box office for every dollar he earned.[2][40]

Critically acclaimed roles: 2008–present

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Producing career

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Humanitarian work

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In the media

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Jimmy Kimmel Live!

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Damon at the 66th Venice International Film Festival, September 7, 2009

Comedian Jimmy Kimmel had a running gag at the end of his ABC television show Jimmy Kimmel Live! where he apologized for not being able to interview Damon. It culminated in a planned skit on September 12, 2006, when Damon appeared on the show after a lengthy introduction by Kimmel and had his interview cut short. Damon cursed him extensively before storming off.[41]

Damon appeared in several of E! Entertainment's top ten Jimmy Kimmel Live! spoofs.[42] On January 31, 2008, Kimmel aired a clip of his then girlfriend, comedian Sarah Silverman, singing a song entitled "I'm Fucking Matt Damon" in which Damon appeared.[43][42] Kimmel responded on February 24, 2008 with his music video which represented that he was "fucking Ben Affleck". It featured Affleck along with several other actors.[42] Another encounter, titled "The Handsome Men's Club", featured Kimmel, along with handsome actors and musicians. At the end of the skit Kimmel had a door slammed in his face by Damon who said that they had run out of time, followed by a sinister laugh.[44][42]

On January 24, 2013, Damon took over his show and mentioned the long-standing feud and having been bumped from years of shows. It involved celebrities who were previously involved in on the "feud", including Robin Williams, Ben Affleck, and Sarah Silverman.[45]

Political views

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Advertising

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Personal life

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Awards and honors

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Notes

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  1. ^ In motion pictures that feature him either as a leading actor or as a supporting co-star, his films have grossed a total of $1.94[4] to $2.42 billion[3] (based on counting his roles as strictly lead or including supporting roles, respectively) at the North American box office, placing him in the top forty grossing actors of all time.
  2. ^ Damon is Affleck's tenth cousin, once removed, through a common New England ancestor.[14]
  3. ^ Another neighbor of Damon's was historian and author Howard Zinn,[16] 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.[10]
  4. ^ He lived in Matthews Hall and then Lowell House,[18]

References

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  1. ^ "Monitor". Entertainment Weekly. No. 1228/1229. Time Inc. Oct 12–19, 2012. p. 23.
  2. ^ a b Pomerantz, Dorothy (August 6, 2007). "Ultimate Star Payback". Forbes. Retrieved April 5, 2009.
  3. ^ a b "All Time Top 100 Stars at the Box Office". The Numbers. Retrieved April 5, 2009.
  4. ^ "Actors #1–50". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved April 5, 2009.
  5. ^ a b Dargis, Manohla (September 10, 2006). "The Boyish Mr. Damon, Not So Boyish After All". The New York Times. Retrieved April 21, 2010.
  6. ^ Luscombe, Belinda (December 19, 1999). "Matt Damon Acts Out". Time. Retrieved April 5, 2009. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  7. ^ a b c d Givens, Ron; Michele McPhee (March 22, 1998). "Two Hollywood Prizefighters 'Hunting' for Stardom Pays Off for Matt Damon". Daily News. Retrieved April 5, 2009. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help) [dead link‍]
  8. ^ "Matt Damon: A true Hollywood player". The Independent. London. October 4, 2006. Retrieved April 5, 2009.
  9. ^ a b c d Raider, Dotson (November 30, 2003). ""My Goals Have Changed" (Actor Matt Damon)". Parade. Retrieved April 21, 2010. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)[dead link‍]
  10. ^ a b Crust, Kevin (October 15, 2004). "'Howard Zinn: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train,' 'Hair Show,' 'The Hillside Strangler,' 'The Dust Factory' and 'Stephen King's Riding the Bullet'". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on June 4, 2008. Retrieved April 5, 2009.
  11. ^ Ball, Ryan. "Matt Damon Animated for Arthur". Animation Magazine. Retrieved April 5, 2009. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  12. ^ a b c Arnold, Gary (December 26, 1997). "Boyhood friends are stars on the rise". The Washington Times. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  13. ^ "Ripley Believe It or Not". Entertainment Weekly. December 17, 1999. Retrieved April 23, 2010. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  14. ^ "Genealogical Chart Knowlton Line of Ben Affleck and Matt Damon" (PDF). New England Historic Genealogical Society. 2009. Retrieved 2010-02-02.
  15. ^ Share on Facebook. "Interview with Matt Damon and Minnie Driver!!! - Ain't It Cool News: The best in movie, TV, DVD, and comic book news". Aintitcool.com. Retrieved 2014-08-13. {{cite web}}: |author= has generic name (help)
  16. ^ Horowitz, David (2004). Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam And The American Left. Regnery Publishing. p. 102. ISBN 0-89526-076-X. Retrieved April 5, 2009.
  17. ^ "Oscar winner Matt Damon on his Harvard years", Harvard Gazette, August 6, 2013
  18. ^ McGrath, Charles (October 1, 2006). "6 Degrees of Harvard". The New York Times. Retrieved April 5, 2009.
  19. ^ a b c Chainani, Soman S. "Matt Damon On Life, Acting and Harvard". The Harvard Crimson. Retrieved April 21, 2010.
  20. ^ Siegler, Elijah (November 2, 1990). "Ex Show Safe but Satisfying". The Harvard Crimson. Retrieved October 11, 2013. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  21. ^ Joseph, Jennifer (1 March 2010). "Matt Damon: Before They Were Stars". ABC News.
  22. ^ Koltnow, Barry (December 5, 1999). "Looking for Mr. 'Good' Guy". The Orange County Register.
  23. ^ a b c d e "Matt Damon Biography". People. Retrieved April 5, 2009.
  24. ^ a b "Matt Damon - Season 13, Episode 3", Inside the Actors Studio, Bravo TV, January 8, 2007
  25. ^ Greenblatt, Leah (September 21, 2007). "Actorexia: A Brief History". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved April 5, 2009. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  26. ^ Kempley, Rita (November 8, 1998). "Hand-to-Heart Combat". The Washington Post. Retrieved April 21, 2010.
  27. ^ Matthew Jacobs (August 15, 2013). "Ben Affleck's 41st Birthday Recalls Actor's Early Roles, Surprising Hobbies And Political Activism". Huffington Post. Retrieved October 3, 2014.
  28. ^ a b Wallace, Amy (February 11, 1998). "'Titanic' Ties Record for Oscar Nominations". The Hartford Courant. Retrieved April 5, 2009. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  29. ^ Waxman, Sharon; William Booth (March 23, 1998). "'Titanic's' 11 Oscars Ties Record; Night 'Good' for Nicholson, Hunt". The Washington Post. Retrieved April 5, 2009.
  30. ^ Corrine Heller (October 2, 2014). "Ben Affleck's Most Awkward Smiles". E! Entertainment. Retrieved October 3, 2014.
  31. ^ a b c "Box Office Mojo – Matt Damon". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved April 21, 2010.
  32. ^ "Matt Damon". The Biography Channel. Retrieved April 5, 2009.[dead link‍]
  33. ^ EW Staff (June 12, 2013). "Perfect Casting: Stars on Screen as Themselves". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved October 3, 2014.
  34. ^ Matthews, Jack (November 21, 1997). "John Grisham's The Rainmaker". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on June 28, 2010. Retrieved April 21, 2010.
  35. ^ CBS News Staff (July 23, 1998). "Matt Damon: Playing Private Ryan". CBS News. Retrieved October 3, 2014.
  36. ^ Geier, Thom (2009-12-11). "The 100 Greatest Movies, TV Shows, Albums, Books, Characters, Scenes, Episodes, Songs, Dresses, Music Videos, And Trends That Entertained Us Over The Past 10 Years". Entertainment Weekly. p. (1079/1080):74–84. {{cite magazine}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  37. ^ O'Sullivan, Michael (August 26, 2005). "A Disappointingly 'Grimm' Tale". The Washington Post. Retrieved April 21, 2010.
  38. ^ Schwarzbaum, Lisa (November 23, 2005). "EW review: 'Syriana' lacks humanity". CNN. Retrieved April 5, 2009.
  39. ^ "The Departed reviews". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved April 21, 2010.
  40. ^ "A box-office banker: How Matt Damon became Hollywood's leading man". The Independent. London. August 8, 2007. Retrieved April 5, 2009.[dead link‍]
  41. ^ Lynch, Lorrie. "Who's News". USA Weekend. Retrieved April 5, 2009. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help) [dead link‍]
  42. ^ a b c d "Jimmy Kimmel Life 10 Best Spoofs and Pranks in the Show's History". E! Entertainment. September 27, 2013. Retrieved October 3, 2014.
  43. ^ Jordan, Julie (February 2, 2008). "Behind Matt Damon's Raunchy Payback to Jimmy Kimmel". People. Retrieved April 5, 2009. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  44. ^ Wyatt, Edward (February 27, 2008). "Late-Night TV Satires Become Online Hits". The New York Times. Retrieved April 5, 2009.
  45. ^ "Matt Damon finally, finally conquers 'Jimmy Kimmel Live' -- VIDEO". Entertainment Weekly. January 25, 2013. Retrieved October 3, 2014.
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