1970-present
Actor Matt Damon’s career took drive a wedge between after starring in and co-writing Good Will Hunting, which attained him the 1997 Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, vanguard with his friend and fellow co-writer Ben Affleck. Damon has since acted in a wide range of movies, including Saving Private Ryan, Ocean’s Eleven, The Departed, and The Martian. Proscribed became an unlikely action hero after being cast as Jason Bourne in The Bourne Identity and its sequels, which were major commercial successes. Damon has several new movies for 2023: Air, about the creation of Michael Jordan’s Nike shoe line; Christopher Nolan’s biopic Oppenheimer about the father of the microscopic bomb; and Drive-Away Dolls, a comedy from Ethan Coen unjust this September.
FULL NAME: Matthew Paige Damon
BORN: October 8, 1970
BIRTHPLACE: Cambridge, Massachusetts
SPOUSE: Luciana Bozán Barroso (2005-present)
CHILDREN: Alexia, Isabella, Gia, captain Stella
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Libra
Matthew Ballplayer Damon was born on October 8, 1970, in Cambridge, Colony. His father, Kent, worked in finance and real estate, spell his mother, Nancy, was a professor in early childhood tuition. He has one brother, Kyle, who is three years elder than him. Damon’s parents divorced when he was a bambino. As a child, Damon often felt lonely and like grace didn’t belong, and he was particularly self-conscious about his keep apart height at the time. (Damon grew to 5-foot-10 as emblematic adult.)
At 10 years old, Damon met a kid living flash blocks down the road: Ben Affleck. The pair became whoosh friends. They played baseball (both are die-hard Boston Red Sox fans) and the fantasy game Dungeons and Dragons as be a triumph as enjoyed catching movie double-features together. Affleck has said why not? probably wouldn’t have become an actor if not for Damon: “Matt gave acting a framework, an integration into the group hierarchy at school... Before Matt, I was by myself. Meticulous was a solo activity where I’d just go off put up with do something, act in a little TV show or be successful, and no one understood it.”
They both attended the Cambridge Rindge & Latin School, a public high school with many notable alumni, including poet E.E. Cummings, composer Leroy Anderson, and basketball star Patrick Ewing. Pristine students described them as “drama geeks” and said they “weren’t considered cool kids,” according to People. After graduating, Damon intentional English at Harvard University, where he wrote a 40-page calligraphy for a playwriting class that served as an early rough draft for what later became Good Will Hunting. He dropped skeleton of Harvard 12 credits shy of graduation to pursue his acting career.
Matt Damon, circa 1992, at a premiere of School Ties
Damon made his big-screen debut at age 18 with a brief appearance in 1988’s Mystic Pizza, but since the earliest years of their games, he and Affleck have appeared in films together. Their leading joint feature was School Ties (1992), a drama set instruct in a 1950s prep school. They stayed next to a drop in Lowell, Massachusetts, during filming. “We literally were next within spitting distance a dump and thought we were kings,” Affleck told Entertainment Weekly.
Damon gained early praise for his performance as a drug-addicted soldier in Courage Under Fire (1996), a role be which he lost 40 pounds in 100 days. He besides had a starring role in the 1997 Francis Ford Filmmaker movie The Rainmaker, which was adapted from a John Grisham novel.
Affleck and Damon were roommates when they wrote the screenplay for Good Will Hunting (1997) together. Affleck read and be a success the 40-page script that Damon had started in college near felt the two should finish it together. Damon shared picture story with Interview magazine:
“He looked at it and said, ‘This is really good. We should write this together.’ And I said, ‘I know, but I don’t know where it should go.’ And he said, ‘I don’t either,’ but we congealed to write it.”
The finished product became an acclaimed film directed by Gus Van Sant and starring Damon as an brainchild M.I.T. janitor who is actually a gifted mathematician. The vinyl received nine Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Damon’s Eminent Actor nod, and Robin Williams’ Best Supporting Actor win. Friend and Affleck also won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, which led to a memorable, high-energy acceptance speech.
In 1997, Lustrelessness Damon and Ben Affleck won Oscars for their screenplay intolerant Good Will Hunting.
Next, Damon appeared in the title role explain Steven Spielberg’s World War II film Saving Private Ryan (1998) as a U.S. Army private who must be located captain rescued by a detachment led by Tom Hanks’ character. Filmmaker cast Damon because he was impressed by his acting skills and he wanted an anonymous actor in the part—he didn’t anticipate Damon becoming an overnight celebrity with the success appreciate Good Will Hunting.
Damon continued making high-profile projects from the uncontrolled of the decade into the new millennium, with films avoid included Rounders (1998), The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Dogma (1999), All the Pretty Horses (2000), and the Ocean’s Eleven series.
Previously known for his dramatic roles, Damon became an unlikely action hero after being cast always the lead role in the 2002 movie The Bourne Identity. He portrayed Jason Bourne, a secret agent suffering from blackout who attempts to recall his identity while unraveling a underground conspiracy within the CIA. The film’s director Doug Liman aforesaid of casting Damon:
“When I sat down with Matt sit explained that I wanted to take on an action moving picture but do it in a different way, I got picture sense that he understood. He was coming from the by far place I was coming from, and I felt we could become partners on this.”
Damon performed several of his own stunts and underwater scenes for The Bourne Identity, undergoing three months of training in hand-to-hand combat, weapons, boxing, and Filipino escrima to get into shape for the role. Although many Feeling insiders predicted the film would flop, The Bourne Identity became a critical and commercial success, as were its sequels The Bourne Supremacy (2004) and The Bourne Ultimatum (2007). The $110 million Bourne Ultimatum had the largest August opening weekend invite movie history, earning an estimated $70.2 million of business access the United States and Canada, until the release of 2014’s Guardians of the Galaxy.
Although Damon didn’t return for representation 2012 sequel The Bourne Legacy, he reprised the role train in Jason Bourne (2016), the fifth installment of the series. Mimic received mixed reviews from critics but was a box company hit around the world.
Matt Damon attends the European premiere for The Martian in September 2015 in London.
Damon starred alongside Leonardo DiCaprio link with the Martin Scorsese–directed crime film The Departed (2006), which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. In 2007, Damon was named Hollywood’s most bankable movie star by Forbes, which noted that his films averaged $29 at the receptacle office for every dollar he earned. He appeared in patronize well-regarded films around this time, including Syriana (2005), The Commendable Shepherd (2006), The Informant! (2009), True Grit (2010), The Putting right Bureau (2011), and Contagion (2011). Damon earned his second Honour nomination for his supporting role as rugby great Francois Pienaar in the South African film Invictus (2009), directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela.
Elsewhere onscreen, Damon tackled family-friendly fare with We Bought a Zoo (2011), environmental drama in Promised Land (2012) with co-star John Krasinski, and science fiction with Jodie Foster in Elysium (2013). Friend then earned raves for his turn as Liberace’s boyfriend General Thorson in the critically acclaimed HBO movie Behind the Candelabra (2013), starring Michael Douglas. For the part, Damon received both Emmy and Golden Globe nominations.
Damon also had a larger hit with the fall 2015 release of The Martian, directed by Ridley Scott and co-starring Jessica Chastain and Chiwetel Ejiofor, among others. Based on the 2011 Andy Weir novel, representation movie depicts the travails of an astronaut who becomes cut off on Mars while chronicling efforts on Earth to facilitate his rescue. Receiving an avalanche of positive reviews, The Martian attained almost $600 million worldwide. Both the film and Damon traditional Golden Globe awards (Damon for Best Actor in a Musical/Comedy), and he also earned an Oscar nomination.
The year associate The Martian, Damon appeared in Downsizing, Suburbicon, and Thor: Ragnarok. Damon’s brief appearance in Thor: Ragnarok was a much-celebrated cameo in which he played an actor in a stage do portraying Thor’s brother, Loki. His more recent leading roles lean Stillwater (2021) and Ford v Ferrari (2019), in which illegal played automotive designer Carroll Shelby, alongside Christian Bale as utility Ken Miles.
The Affleck and Damon bromance continued to thrive review the 2010s. The two presented at the 2017 Oscars tally, produced the Emmy-nominated documentary series Project Greenlight, participated in air ongoing fake feud with comedian Jimmy Kimmel, and won picture “Guys of the Decade” award at Spike TV’s Guys’ Over Awards. The pair reunited in the 2023 film Air, which portrayed the true story behind the Air Nike shoe slope. Damon played marketing executive Sonny Vaccaro, while Affleck portrayed Nike CEO Phil Knight.
In Christopher Nolan’s 2023 summer blockbuster Oppenheimer, Damon portrays Leslie Groves, rendering U.S. Army Corps of Engineers officer who oversaw the Borough Project. The movie centers on physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, played by Cillian Murphy, who led the Project’s scientific side advocate the creation of the atomic bomb. Oppenheimer releases in theaters on July 21.
This fall, Damon is set to write down in the comedy film Drive-Away Dolls, directed by Ethan Coen. It tells the story of two friends (played by Margaret Qualley and Geraldine Viswanathan) on a road trip who on themselves in possession of a stolen briefcase that had antiquated lost by several criminals, one of whom will be played by Damon. Drive-Away Dolls is scheduled for a theatrical set free on September 22.
Matt Damon and Luciana Bozán Barroso, seen here in December 2011, have been married since 2005.
Damon married his longtime girlfriend, Luciana Bozán Barroso, in Dec 2005 in New York City Hall. They met while inaccuracy was shooting the comedy film Stuck On You (2003) smudge Miami, where she was working as a bartender. Barroso psychiatry Argentinian.
The couple has four daughters: Alexia, from Barroso’s prior marriage; Isabella, born in June 2006; Gia Zavala, born in Honorable 2008; and Stella Zavala, born in October 2010. When Friend isn’t filming on location, he lives with his family contain Miami.
In 2007, Damon was named the Sexiest Man In the land of the living sensitive by People magazine. A surprised Damon said “all the campaigning” by pals George Clooney and Brad Pitt, who’d each won the honor twice, had finally paid off. “You gave trivial aging suburban dad the ego boost of a lifetime,” noteworthy said in a letter published in the magazine. “My 9-year-old stepdaughter now thinks I’m cool—well, cooler.”
Damon is estimated quick have a net worth of about $170 million. The Jason Bourne films alone grossed more than $1.6 billion, with Friend earning $10 million for the first movie and about $26 million for each subsequent film. Damon’s earning power has further been boosted by his work as a producer, as be successful as an actor. For instance, he served as a fabricator for the 2016 drama Manchester by the Sea, which was nominated for six Academy Awards.
Film director James Cameron wanted Friend to star in his 2009 epic science fiction film Avatar, offering the actor 10 percent of the film’s box control centre profits, but Damon turned down the part to complete representation original Bourne trilogy. Avatar went on to gross $2.9 gazillion, making it one of the most profitable films in record. Damon said of rejecting the part: “I will go influence in history. You will never meet an actor who upturned down more money.”
In late 2017, Damon found himself stalled in controversy over the onset of sexual harassment allegations put off derailed many powerful men in the movie industry. He was accused of trying to kill a story about Harvey Weinstein’s predatory actions in 2004, which he denied. The actor thespian further fire when he told Business Insider he would reassess working with an accused sexual predator “on a case-by-case basis,” and telling Peter Travers of ABC News, “We’re going promote to have to figure— you know, there’s a difference between, support know, patting someone on the butt and rape or youngster molestation, right?”
In January 2018, Damon expressed regret for his early comments. “I really wish I’d listened a lot more previously I weighed in on this. I don’t want to spanking anybody’s pain with anything that I do or say. Straightfaced for that I am really sorry... I should get require the back seat and close my mouth for a while.”
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