Damon, Matt

▪ American actor, screenwriter, and producer

in full  Matthew Paige Damon 

born Oct. 8, 1970, Cambridge, Mass., U.S.

      American actor, screenwriter, and producer, who was noted for his clean-cut good looks and intelligent performances. He won an Academy Award for best original screenplay for Good Will Hunting (1997).

      Damon was raised in Cambridge, Mass., and attended the Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School, where he took drama classes. At age 18 he landed a small part in Mystic Pizza (1988) and also enrolled in Harvard University as an English major. After appearing in the television movie Rising Son (1990), he left Harvard to pursue an acting career just 12 credits short of graduation. Roles in School Ties (1992) and Geronimo: An American Legend (1993) preceded his acclaimed performance as a young soldier forced to testify about a battle during the Persian Gulf War in Courage Under Fire (1996). This portrayal attracted the attention of director Francis Ford Coppola (Coppola, Francis Ford), who cast Damon as a novice lawyer opposite Danny DeVito in The Rainmaker (1997).

      As Damon's acting career met with success, he also pursued screenwriting. With longtime friend Ben Affleck, he developed the script for Good Will Hunting (1997). The film—based on a one-act play Damon had submitted for a course at Harvard—centres on a troubled but brilliant high-school dropout from Boston. The coauthors convinced Miramax to let them star in the movie alongside veteran actor Robin Williams. The film garnered nine Oscar nominations, including best actor for Damon. In 1998, at age 27, he won (with Affleck) the Academy Award for best original screenplay.

      Highly sought after, Damon appeared in numerous movies in the late 1990s, including Rounders (1998), Steven Spielberg (Spielberg, Steven)'s World War II blockbuster Saving Private Ryan (1998), and Anthony Minghella's The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999). After several box-office disappointments, Damon starred in two film series that were hugely popular. He portrayed one of several con men who join forces in the Ocean's trilogy—Ocean's Eleven (2001), Ocean's Twelve (2004), and Ocean's Thirteen (2007). The films feature an all-star cast that includes George Clooney (Clooney, George) and Brad Pitt. In the Jason Bourne series—The Bourne Identity (2002), The Bourne Supremacy (2004), and The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)—Damon portrayed an amnesiac U.S.-trained assassin trying to unravel the secrets of his past. In addition to being commercial successes, the Bourne films also earned critical praise for their intelligence and kinetic pace.

      Damon's other roles in the early 21st century included an energy analyst who gets caught in the underside of the oil industry in Syriana (2005) and an agent forced to give up his family life in the early days of the CIA in Robert De Niro (De Niro, Robert)'s The Good Shepherd (2006). Also in 2006 Damon starred opposite Leonardo DiCaprio (DiCaprio, Leonardo) and Jack Nicholson (Nicholson, Jack) in The Departed; the crime thriller, which was directed by Martin Scorsese (Scorsese, Martin), won an Academy Award for best picture.

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