Matt Damon

Matt Damon

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Birth name: Matthew Paige Damon
Date of birth: 8 October 1970
Place of birth: Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Nickname: Matt
Height: 5′ 10″ (1.78 m)
Spouse: Luciana Barroso (9 December 2005 – present) 1 child

Famous Quote: “I was never that much a focus of interest that I became a ‘thing’ at an earlier point in my career. I’m aware of having become a ‘thing’ now, which doesn’t give me a lot of pleasure. Success is not something I’ve wrapped my brain around. If people go to those movies, then yes, that’s true, big-time success. If not, it’s much ado about nothing.”

Contact Address and Autograph: Addresses and fan mail information

Matt Damon
PMK/HBH
700 San Vicente Boulevard, Suite G 910
West Hollywood, CA 90069, USA 

Biography: 

Matthew Paige Damon (born October 8, 1970) is an Academy Award-winning American screenwriter and actor. He won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for his screenwriting in Good Will Hunting and was nominated for his lead performance in the same film. Growing steadily in popularity from the 1997 film, he has since matched up with A-list actors in mainstream films, and today is rated among the top actors in Hollywood.

Despite his All-American persona, actor Matt Damon has thrived in roles that ran counter to his mom-and-apple pie image. Whether playing a combative mathematics genius, a serial killer hunting the rich and famous, or a lethal spy unable to recall his identity, Damon has built a strong and respected career tackling characters that went against type. In fact, when Damon played into expectations, he more often than not failed most notably in “The Legend of Bagger Vance” (2000) and “All the Pretty Horses” (2000). But perhaps more famous than the roles he played had been his longtime friendship with actor Ben Affleck both came of age together as actors and wrote the Academy Award-winning screenplay for “Good Will Hunting” (1997). Superstardom, however, tended to allude the young actor, even when starring alongside heavyweights George Clooney and Brad Pitt in “Ocean’s Eleven” (2001) and its sequels, or landing a meaty part in Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning thriller “The Departed” (2006) – perhaps a calculated effort for an actor more interested in doing quality work than absorbing the spotlight.

With his wife, Luciana Bozán Barroso, Damon has a daughter, and also a stepdaughter from Barroso’s prior marriage. He has won multiple awards for his film performances and is one of the top twenty-five highest grossing actors of all time. Damon has been actively involved in several charitable organizations, including the ONE Campaign and H2O Africa Foundation. In his most recent roles, he portrayed Jason Bourne in The Bourne Ultimatum, and had an uncredited cameo in Youth Without Youth. His recent role in Margaret, released in 2008.

Damon was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts the son of Kent Telfer Damon, a stockbroker, realtor, and tax preparer, and Nancy Carlsson-Paige, an early childhood education professor at Lesley University. In an interview with Mail on Sunday, Damon responded that his grandfather is probably the most “impressive person he knows,” stating, “He’s Finnish, a very proud man, who would never take help from anybody. He came to America when he was a little boy, grew up during the Depression and sold shoes. He always used to tell us the story about getting a raise of three and a half cents, and how that was an incredible moment of success. He’s extraordinary.” Damon has a brother, Kyle, who is an accomplished sculptor and artist. Damon and his family lived in Newton for the first two years of his life, but after his parents divorced, Damon and his brother moved with his mother to Cambridge.

Damon grew up near neighbor Ben Affleck, a close friend since childhood and future collaborator on several films, and historian and author Howard Zinn, 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 narrated. Damon attended Cambridge Rindge and Latin School in Cambridge, and performed in several theater productions. He graduated from the school in 1988 and began attending Harvard University the same year. Damon could have graduated with the class of 1992, but kept leaving classes to pursue acting projects, including the TNT original film Rising Son and ensemble prep-school drama School Ties. While at Harvard, he studied English and lived in Lowell House. He did not take part in student theater generally, but did appear in A… My Name is Alice (in one of the three male roles usually performed by women). Damon dropped out of the university with twelve units left to graduate to pursue his acting career in Los Angeles after he expected Geronimo: An American Legend to be a big success.

Raised in nearby Newton. His father, Kent, was a stockbroker and his mother, Nancy, a professor of early-childhood education at Lesley College. When Damon was 2-years old, his parents divorced, leaving him to be reared by his mother in a commune-style home back in Cambridge. Because of the open and creative environment, Damon developed a taste for artistic endeavors at an early age. Although he acted onstage in school plays and declared his intention to pursue that career when he enrolled at Harvard University, Damon found it difficult at first. He made his feature debut screen with a one-line role of Adam Storke’s younger brother in “Mystic Pizza” (1988). In 1991, Damon ditched Harvard 12 credits shy of his bachelor’s degree in English, choosing instead to co-star opposite Brian Dennehy as a medical school dropout in the made-for-cable movie, “Rising Son” (TNT, 1990).

His first film role came in 1988 when he was 18, with a single line of dialogue in the romantic comedy Mystic Pizza. Damon appeared in small roles before landing a big part in Geronimo: An American Legend with Gene Hackman and Jason Patric. He next appeared as a heroin-addicted soldier in 1996′s Courage Under Fire. He was required to lose 40 pounds (18 kg) in 100 days (for only two days of filming). After following a self-prescribed diet and fitness regimen to lose the weight, Damon was told after filming that he was fortunate his heart did not shrink. Damon took medication for several years afterwards to correct the stress inflicted on his adrenal gland, and has stated that it was worthwhile to properly portray his character and show the industry how committed he was to the role.

With his acting career on the rise, he excelled as an anti-Semitic preppie in “School Ties” (1992), but later stated that the competition for the roles in his age range was fierce. Nearly all the young men in “School Ties” had auditioned for the co-starring role in “Scent of a Woman” (also 1992), but that plum role opposite an Oscar-winning Al Pacino went to Chris O’Donnell. In fact, Damon and O’Donnell often competed for roles, with the latter generally winning out. Meanwhile, Damon proved adequate as the narrator of Walter Hill’s revisionist Western “Geronimo: An American Legend” (1993), only to be overshadowed by more seasoned actors, notably Gene Hackman and Wes Studi. On the other hand, he all but pulled the rug out from under Denzel Washington in “Courage Under Fire” (1996), offering a vivid turn as a guilt-ridden veteran of the Persian Gulf War tormented by an incident in battle. He even lost 40 pounds to achieve the gaunt, haunted look of the character.

When he was at Harvard, Damon began writing a script about a troubled mathematics genius with childhood buddy, Affleck. They fashioned a screenplay that soon became the talk of Hollywood, with studios bidding competitively for the project. Old friend and director Kevin Smith did his best to get it noticed by the Weinstein’s at Miramax, going to bat for his two buddies. In 1994, Castle Rock initially purchased the rights for over a half-million dollars in a pay-or-play deal. The story then focused on Will, a South Boston resident with superior intelligence whom the government attempts to recruit. 

A year later, with the project in turnaround, Miramax purchased the rights and the script evolved to focus more strongly on the emotional difficulties of the leading character. Before “Good Will Hunting” went before the cameras, however, Damon landed his first screen lead as a newly-minted crusading attorney in Francis Ford Coppola’s adaptation of “John Grisham’s ‘The Rainmaker’” (1997). The one-two punch of the two leading roles – undoubtedly assisted by the resulting mythology building for Damon and Affleck as writers and actors – solidified the actor’s status as the so-called “It” boy of 1997, along with Affleck. 

Earning a Best Actor Academy Award nomination and sharing an Oscar win for Best Screenplay with Affleck only upped his profile and provided Academy Award history with one of its most fairy-tale like moments come to life when, as their respective mothers sat in the audience, the two young bucks ran cheering to the stage, breathlessly thanking everyone in funny, quick succession. The twosome were, in fact, guys struggling to make it in the biz that everyone could relate to; thus, making their win that much sweeter.

Damon and Affleck developed a thriller about a young math genius, which they pitched around Hollywood. Receiving advice from writer/director/actor Rob Reiner, screenwriter William Goldman, and their friend writer/director Kevin Smith, the two changed the script around to focus on a young math genius trying to make his way in the world. The script eventually became Good Will Hunting, and received nine Academy Awards nominations, earning Damon and Affleck Oscars for Best Original Screenplay. Damon was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for the same film and the film netted an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for co-star Robin Williams. 

Damon and Affleck were each paid salaries of $500,000; the film grossed over $100 million at the box office. Damon parodied his role in the film in Kevin Smith’s Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. After meeting Damon on the set of Good Will Hunting, director Steven Spielberg cast Damon in the World War II film Saving Private Ryan (1998).

Damon’s career hit a brief but worrisome slump with the release of three creative and box-office duds in a row: director Robert Redford’s lethargic “The Legend of Bagger Vance,” with Damon as a washed up golf pro opposite wise caddy Will Smith; “All the Pretty Horses,” director Billy Bob Thornton’s failed adaptation of novelist Cormac McCarthy’s romantic Western; and a small supporting turn in Van Sant’s by-the-numbers “Finding Forrester” (2000). The actor recaptured his A-list cachet when he joined the all-star cast of Steven Soderbergh’s remake of “Ocean’s Eleven,” playing pickpocket and aspiring big-time thief, Linus Caldwell, in the popular hit – a role he returned to for the sequels “Ocean’s Twelve” (2004) and Ocean’s Thirteen” (2007). His next film was a complete about-face from those slick, polished crowd-pleasers: Damon and Casey Affleck starred (and co-wrote) the largely improvised drama, “Gerry” (2002), a little-seen effort directed by Van Sant about two men named Gerry who are stranded in the desert during a hiking mishap – an intriguing experiment that proved to be unfit for mainstream audiences.

Over the years, Damon cultivated a reputation as one of the most affable movie actors in Hollywood and frequently collaborated with friends to give their projects a boost. His desire to help others get their careers off the ground led he and Affleck to create the HBO reality series, “Project: Greenlight” (2001- ), which documented and bankrolled untried aspiring filmmakers’ attempts to create a motion picture to be released by Miramax – the show resulted in the films “Stolen Summer” (2002) and “The Battle of Shaker Heights” (2003), both executive produced by Affleck and Damon. 

The duo also created and produced the short-lived “Push, Nevada” (ABC, 2002-03), an interactive mystery show that gave viewers the chance to solve the crime and win $1 million. Damon also had a cameo in films by his friend, Kevin Smith, including “Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back” (2001) and “Jersey Girl” (2004); and in films from his “Ocean’s Eleven” collaborators, including “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind” (2002); and up-and-coming filmmaker pals, such as the creators of the comedy “Eurotrip” (2004). As a voice actor, Damon lend his distinctive vocals to the films “Titan A.E.” (2000), “Spirit: Stallion of the Cimmaron” (2002), “The Majestic” (2001), and “Howard Zinn: You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train” (2004).

Along with Affleck and producers Chris Moore and Sean Bailey, Damon founded the production company LivePlanet, through which the four created the documentary series Project Greenlight to find and fund worthwhile film projects from novice filmmakers. The company produced and founded the failed mystery-hybrid series Push, Nevada among other projects. Project Greenlight was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Reality Program in 2002, 2004, and 2005.

Demonstrating his increasing diversity and believability, Damon took on the role of the amnesiac über-spy Jason Bourne in the film adaptation of Robert Ludlum’s sprawling espionage novel, “The Bourne Identity” (2002), a crackerjack thriller that did solid box office business and became a mega-hit on home video. The actor would reprise the role for the equally well-crafted, but ultimately unsatisfying sequel “The Bourne Supremacy” (2004). Demonstrating a flair for goofball comedy, Damon delivered a wickedly funny turn on the small screen as Jack’s scheming rival to join the gay men’s chorus in a 2002 episode of the hit NBC sitcom “Will & Grace;” a role he reprised the following season. Damon next joined – literally – Greg Kinnear to play one half of a pair of conjoined twins in the flawed but still winning comedy, “Stuck On You” (2003), a silly romp from the Farrelly Brothers that proved to be a rare miss for the filmmaking duo.

His next film cast him opposite Heath Ledger as a fictionalized version of Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm, the Bavarian fairy tale spinners known as “The Brothers Grimm” (2005), re-imagined by director Terry Gilliam as a pair of curse-removing con artists who are suddenly tasked with solving a genuine mystery that will ultimately inspire their famous stories. Damon showed a great deal of panache and charisma as practical scoundrel Wilhelm, but the story ultimately left him too little to do; the film itself lacked the spark and imagination expected of a Gilliam project. Behind the scenes, Damon was credited with frequently playing peacemaker between the embattled Gilliam and the films’ producers, the Weinstein brothers. At the end of that year Damon delivered a fine turn in the complex potboiler, “Syriana” (2005), playing an oil industry analyst living a comfortable life in Geneva until the death of his son while visiting an oil-rich country, drives him to obsession with helping the country’s benevolent prince (Alexander Siddig) raise his nation with sound business dealings.

Damon has been known to choose a wide variety of film roles, from his portrayal of bisexual murderer Tom Ripley in The Talented Mr. Ripley, for which he received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor, to a fallen angel who discusses pop culture as intellectual subject matter in Dogma, in which he co-starred with Affleck (1999); from a conjoined twin in Stuck on You, to a film he co-wrote with friend Casey Affleck and Gus Van Sant with limited dialogue—the low budget experimental film Gerry. Damon has been part of two major film franchises. He played amnesiac assassin Jason Bourne in the successful action movies The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, and The Bourne Ultimatum, and starred as the youthful, optimistic thief Linus Caldwell, opposite George Clooney, Brad Pitt, and Julia Roberts in Steven Soderbergh’s 2001 remake of the Rat Pack’s 1960 caper classic Ocean’s Eleven. The successful crime dramedy spawned two sequels: Ocean’s Twelve (2004) and Ocean’s Thirteen (2007).

Damon next joined an all-star cast that included Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Wahlberg and Jack Nicholson for “The Departed” (2006), playing a hardened criminal employed by a crime syndicate who infiltrates the police while his counterpart (DiCaprio) on the force goes undercover in the mob. Based on the excellent Hong Kong action thriller, “Infernal Affairs” (2002) and directed by Martin Scorsese, “The Departed” earned a huge helping critical kudos prior to its early October release – as well as several Academy Award wins. In “The Good Shepherd” (2006), a historical look at the beginnings of the CIA, Damon played Edward Wilson, a bright, idealistic Yale student recruited by the OSS to work intelligence during World War II. While later helping to form the CIA, he becomes disenfranchised during the heightened suspicions and deep-rooted paranoia of the Cold War. In 2007, Damon revived two favorite characters for a second time, appearing as Linus Caldwell in the much-improved “Ocean’s Thirteen” (2007), and Jason Bourne for “The Bourne Ultimatum” (2007), who comes out of retirement to defeat arch rival, The Jackal, in a once-and-for-all showdown. 

Among other high profile roles, Damon played a fictionalized version of Wilhelm Grimm in Terry Gilliam’s fantasy adventure The Brothers Grimm and an energy analyst in Syriana. He was recently onscreen in Robert De Niro’s The Good Shepherd as a career CIA agent, and played an undercover mobster working for the Massachusetts State Police in Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning The Departed, a remake of the Hong Kong police thriller Infernal Affairs. He had an uncredited cameo in Francis Ford Coppola’s Youth Without Youth (released in 2007) and has a supporting role in Kenneth Lonergan’s film Margaret, due in 2008.

In 2007, rumors stated that producer J.J. Abrams was trying to get Damon to play James T. Kirk in the eleventh Star Trek feature film. Damon told IGN on July 20, 2007, that he would not be in the film as the director was casting someone significantly younger, and speculation about his casting had been solely based on Internet rumors.

In motion pictures that feature him as a leading actor or supporting co-star, his films have grossed a total of $1.92 to $2.28 billion (based on counting his roles as strictly lead or including supporting roles) at the North American box office, placing him in the top twenty-five grossing actors of all time. In August 2007, financial magazine Forbes created a list of actors who generated the best box office performance related to their salaries; the list placed Damon as the most bankable star of the actors reviewed, revealing that Damon had averaged $29 at the box office for every dollar he earned for his last three films.

Damon’s future projects include three films that will debut between 2008 and 2009: In 2008, he will portray Mr. Aaron in the drama Margaret. He began filming Green Zone in January, 2008, and starts filming Steven Soderbergh’s thriller, The Informant, in Central Illinois during April, 2008. Although Universal studio executives claimed in an article at Variety on 22 February 2008 that Damon and director Paul Greengrass had signed on for a fourth Bourne film, this was denied by Damon and Greengrass on 9 March 2008, where Damon said they had not agreed to another Bourne film. Damon stated “There are a lot of things that would have to happen before we would sign up for it.”

Damon has had relationships with several actresses throughout his career. Damon had a two-year relationship with actress Winona Ryder. He also dated Odessa Whitmire, who has worked as a personal assistant for Billy Bob Thornton and Ben Affleck, from 2001 to 2003. His relationship with Good Will Hunting co-star Minnie Driver reportedly ended when Damon announced their break-up on The Oprah Winfrey Show, though both actors have repeatedly denied this. Damon later stated that he was “sick and tired” of hearing the story, saying it was false. Driver’s sister allegedly told Cosmopolitan that the couple had broken up before the show was taped. Although the media often claimed Damon dated actress Eva Mendes, both have denied any relationship.

Damon met Argentine-born Luciana Bozan Barroso in Miami, 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 Bozan’s young daughter, Alexia, from her previous marriage. The couple’s first child together, daughter Isabella, was born on June 11, 2006 in Miami, Florida. Damon and his wife are expecting their second child.

Damon, along with frequent co-stars George Clooney and Brad Pitt, supports ONE, a campaign fighting AIDS and poverty in Third World countries. He has appeared in their print and television advertising. Damon is a board member of GreenDimes.com, an organization that attempts to halt the tons of junk mail delivered to American homes each day. Appearing on The Oprah Winfrey Show on April 20, 2007, Damon promoted the organization’s efforts to prevent the trees used for junk mail letters and envelopes from being chopped down. Damon stated: “For an estimated dime a day they can stop 70 per cent of the junk mail that comes to your house. It’s very simple, easy to do, great gift to give, I’ve actually signed up my entire family. It was a gift given to me this past holiday season and I was so impressed that I’m now on the board of the company.”

Damon; along with George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Don Cheadle, and Jerry Weintraub; is one of the founders of Not On Our Watch, an organization that focuses global attention and resources to stop and prevent mass atrocities such as in Darfur. He is also the founder of H2O Africa Foundation, the charitable arm of the Running the Sahara expedition.

Comedian Jimmy Kimmel often says: “Our apologies to Matt Damon, we ran out of time” near the end of his ABC television show Jimmy Kimmel Live, a gag lampooning instances where shows cannot feature their last guest due to time constraints. On September 12, 2006, after a segment highlighting the running gag and a lengthy introduction by Kimmel, Damon finally appeared on the show, only for Kimmel to apologetically cut his interview and head to credits, as Damon cursed him. Kimmel later confirmed to USA Weekend that the skit was entirely planned and Damon willingly played along. 

Kimmel’s girlfriend, comedian Sarah Silverman, also used this line at the end of the 2007 MTV Movie Awards. This gag was also used again when Guillermo interviewed Damon at the Ocean’s 13 premiere, with Damon asking “Are you with Kimmel?” Silverman also aired a clip of her singing a song entitled “I’m Fucking Matt Damon” on January 31, 2008 on Jimmy Kimmel Live. Damon appears in the song with Silverman and at the end when she is apologizing to Jimmy, Damon interrupts her saying, “Jimmy, we’re out of time. Sorry.” Kimmel himself later responded by showing a music video in which he announced, through song, that he is “Fucking Ben Affleck”. The video aired on February 24, 2008 and featured Affleck along with celebrities such as Brad Pitt, Harrison Ford, Cameron Diaz, Joan Jett, Macy Gray, Robin Williams, Don Cheadle, Pete Wentz, Perry Farrell, Benji and Joel Madden, Lance Bass, Huey Lewis, Josh Groban, Christopher Mintz-Plasse(McLovin), Christina Applegate, Rebecca Romijn, Dominic Monaghan, Meatloaf and various others.

Damon appeared on Hardball with Chris Matthews in December 2006 and discussed the ongoing war in Iraq. Responding to Chris Matthews, Damon stated: “I don’t think that it’s fair, as I said before, that it seems like we have a fighting class in our country that’s comprised of people who have to go for either financial reasons, or, I don’t think that that is fair and if you’re gonna send people to war … then that needs to be shared by everybody.” Matt is a fan of the Boston Red Sox.

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