Matt Damon

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Matthew Paige Damon (born October 8, 1970) is an Academy Award-winning American screenwriter and actor.

Biography

Early life

Damon was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the son of Kent T. Damon, an investment banker and realtor, and Nancy Carlsson-Paige, an early-childhood education professor. His maternal grandfather, John Walter Paige, was an immigrant from Finland.[link] His brother Kyle is an accomplished artist and sculptor. He graduated from Cambridge Rindge and Latin in 1988, the only public high school in Cambridge, MA. Damon's first film job was one line in the romantic comedy Mystic Pizza (1988). He went on to attend Harvard University, but dropped out a few credits shy of graduating to pursue his acting career, a move that brought him to Los Angeles.

Career

Damon appeared in small roles in a few movies before landing a big part in with Gene Hackman and Jason Patric. He next appeared as a heroin-addicted soldier in 1996's Courage Under Fire. The war film was an opportunity for Damon to show his dedication by undergoing an extensive weight loss to help portray his character, as he was required to lose 40 pounds in 100 days (for only two days of shooting). After following a self-prescribed diet and fitness regimen to lose the weight, Damon was advised after the filming that he was fortunate his heart did not shrink. Damon was required to be on medication for several years to correct the stress inflicted on his adrenal gland, but maintains it was worthwhile to properly reflect his character's anguish and to show the industry how committed he was to the role.

Damon and actor Ben Affleck, close personal friends as well as co-stars in several films, developed a thriller about a young math genius, which they pitched around Hollywood. Receiving advice from writer/director/actor Rob Reiner and screenwriter William Goldman, the two changed the script around to focus on a young math genius trying to make his way in the world. This eventually became Good Will Hunting, which earned both Damon and Affleck Oscars for Best Original Screenplay. Damon was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for the same film (which netted an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for co-star Robin Williams). Much of the credit for getting the film made goes to both executive producer Kevin Smith and Harvey Weinstein, Miramax Films chairman, to whom Smith gave the screenplay after the studio had originally passed on the script.

Damon also founded Project Greenlight with Affleck and Chris Moore to find and fund worthwhile film projects from novice filmmakers. The televised documentary about the making of the film projects has twice been nominated for an Emmy.

Damon has been known to stray from the mainstream in his choice of roles, such as his portrayal of murderer Tom Ripley in The Talented Mr. Ripley, a fallen angel who waxes pop culture as intellectual subject matter in Dogma, in which he costarred with Affleck (1999), and the low budget and experimental film Gerry.

Damon also played amnesiac assassin Jason Bourne in the successful action movies The Bourne Identity and The Bourne Supremacy, with another Bourne sequel, The Bourne Ultimatum, expected in 2007.

He will next be seen onscreen playing the Andy Lau character in Martin Scorsese's The Departed , a remake of the famous Hong Kong police thriller Infernal Affairs, and in Robert DeNiro's The Good Shepherd as a career man in the C.I.A.. He also has a supporting role in Kenneth Lonergan's film Margaret, due in late 2006, and an uncredited cameo in Francis Ford Coppola's Youth Without Youth, due in 2007.

It has recently been rumored that the new Star Trek director J.J. Abrams is trying to get Damon to play a young James Tiberius Kirk in the upcoming Star Trek prequel of Kirk and Spock in their Starfleet Academy days. Previously rumored for the part was Damon's long time friend Ben Affleck.

Personal life

While filming Stuck on You in 2003, Damon met Argentine-born Luciana Bozán Barroso at Crobar in Miami Beach, where she was working as a bartender. They married in a private civil ceremony on December 9, 2005 in New York City Hall. Damon became stepfather to Barroso's young daughter, Alexia, from a previous marriage. The couple's first child together, daughter Isabella, was born on June 11, 2006, in Miami.

Prior to meeting Barroso, Damon had dated actresses Claire Danes, Minnie Driver and Winona Ryder, as well as model Bridget Hall and Ben Affleck's former personal assistant, Odessa Whitmire. He has admitted he wrote the female lead character of Skylar in 1997's Good Will Hunting about his real-life former girlfriend, Skylar Satenstein, whom he dated while attending Harvard University. Satenstein later married Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich, although they are now divorced.

To promote the film Rounders with Edward Norton, Damon and Norton were entered by Miramax into the 1998 World Series of Poker main event $10,000 buy-in No Limit Texas Hold'em. Damon was eliminated on the first day by poker legend Doyle Brunson.

Trivia

• In the film , Damon is portrayed as mentally handicapped, capable of only saying his name. However, South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone say they are friendly with Damon, and that he was going to be portrayed differently until his puppet "came out wrong." Damon has laughed about the characterisation to journalists, including saying his name as per the movie and saying he would have been offended if they didn't include him in the movie.

• Contrary to a popular and wide-spread rumor, Damon did not break up with former girlfriend Minnie Driver on the Oprah Winfrey show in early 1998. They had broken up agreeably a number of weeks before the show, but Driver claimed that she was unaware until she saw the show and then sought sympathy from the press as a "wronged woman." Damon did not publicly deny this until years later. Driver and her sister later admitted that the rumor was false, and that the break-up had occurred weeks before the show.

• Contrary to a story printed in a tabloid, Damon and Affleck are not remaking Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and never had any intention to.

• He nominally supports the Melbourne Football Club in Australian Rules Football after meeting player Clint Bizzell while promoting The Bourne Supremacy in Australia.

• He was mentioned on Dave Letterman's Top Ten on "Top Ten Things I, Peter Griffin, Would Like To Say To America" (#4. "Hey Ben Affleck and Matt Damon we're all still waiting on that second Oscar-winning script").

• Matt visited Zambia and South Africa in late April 2006 on a listening and learning trip organized by Africa advocacy group DATA (Debt AIDS Trade Africa) and ONE: The Campaign to Make Poverty History.

• He played at the 1998 World Series of Poker main event, where he was knocked out when his pocket kings were up against legendary Doyle Brunson's pocket aces.

• He narrates the People's History of the United States audiobook by Howard Zinn. Zinn was Matt's neighbor during his childhood in Cambridge. In Good Will Hunting, Damon's character reccomends that his psychiatrist read the book.

• In the films Ocean's Eleven, Ocean's Twelve, and Gerry, Matt worked with his friend Ben Affleck's brother, Casey Affleck.

• There is a semi-recurring joke on Jimmy Kimmel Live where at the end of shows Kimmel says "...and sorry to Matt Damon, we ran out of time," the joke being that Matt Damon was not scheduled to appear that night. Kimmel told website tmz.com that "We do it at the end of every show for no good reason at all."

Selected filmography

Year	Film	Role	Notes
2007	The Bourne Ultimatum	Jason Bourne	Announced
	Ocean's Thirteen	Linus Caldwell	Announced
2006	The Good Shepherd	Edward Wilson	Post-production
	Margaret	Mr. Aaron	Post-production
	The Departed	Colin Sullivan	Post-production
2005	Syriana	Bryan Woodman
	The Brothers Grimm	Wilhelm Grimm
2004	Ocean's Twelve	Linus Caldwell
	The Bourne Supremacy	Jason Bourne
	Jersey Girl	PR Exec #2	Cameo
	Eurotrip	Donny	Cameo
2003	Stuck On You	Bob
2002	Confessions of a Dangerous Mind	Matt, bachelor #2	Cameo
	The Bourne Identity	Jason Bourne
		Spirit	Voice
	Gerry	Gerry	Also co-writer
2001	The Majestic	Luke Trimble	Voice only
	Ocean's Eleven	Linus Caldwell
	Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back	Himself	Cameo
2000	Finding Forrester	Steven Sanderson	Cameo
	All the Pretty Horses	John Grady Cole
	The Legend of Bagger Vance	Rannulph Junah
	Titan A.E.	Cale Tucker	Voice
1999	The Talented Mr. Ripley	Tom Ripley
	Dogma	Loki
1998	Rounders	Mike McDermott
	Saving Private Ryan	Private James Francis Ryan
1997	Good Will Hunting	Will Hunting	Also co-writer
	The Rainmaker	Rudy Baylor
	Chasing Amy	Shawn Oran	Cameo
1996	Glory Daze	Edgar Pudwhacker	Cameo
	Courage Under Fire	Specialist Ilario
1992	School Ties	Charlie Dillon
1988	Mystic Pizza	Steamer	One line

External links