Actors - Matt Damon

Home > Listing Index > Actors > Matt Damon

	Actors - Matt Damon

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

Early life

Born in [ the son of an investment banker and realtor, Kent T. Damon, and an early-childhood education professor, Nancy Carlsson-Paige, who are both American born but of British, Finnish and German ancestry. Although he spent his early years growing up in Newton, Massachusetts living with his mother, Nancy, and brother Kyle T. Damon, an accomplished mixed media artist, he remained very close to his father. His family eventually moved back to Cambridge, MA and he attended Cambridge Rindge and Latin, the only public High School in Cambridge, MA where he helped the school win many state drama festivals. 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.

Acting career

Damon appeared in small roles in a few movies 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
. The war film was an opportunity for Damon to show his dedication by undergoing an extensive weight loss to help portray his character, which almost proved a dangerous move that put Damon on doctor's orders.

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.

Damon also founded Project Greenlight with Affleck and Chris Moore to find and fund worthwhile film projects from novice filmmakers.

Damon has been known to stray from the mainstream in his choice of roles, such as his portrayal of the cold-blooded killer and money-obsessed homosexual 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 in Martin Scorsese's The Departed
as an undercover mobster in the Boston State Police force and Robert DeNiro's The Good Shepherd as a career man in the C.I.A.. Both films are considered heavy awards contenders. He also has a cameo role in Kenneth Lonergan's film "Margaret", also due in late 2006.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Matt Damon ]

This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article Matt Damon; it is used under the GNU Free Documentation License. You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the GFDL.

Searches on eBay