Matthew Paige Damon (born October 8, 1970) is an American film actor and screenwriter. He was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts where he attended Cambridge Rindge and Latin, and helped the school to 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 out to Los Angeles. He, Ben Affleck, Rory Cochrane, and Matthew McConaughey are good friends.
Damon appeared in small roles in a few movies before landing a big part in Geronimo 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 fatal move that put Damon on doctor's orders.
Damon and Affleck concocted a story about a CIA espionage thriller about a young math genius, which they pitched around town. 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 and sent their careers into overdrive. He was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for the same film (that netted an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for co-star Robin Williams. Much of the credit goes to both director Kevin Smith and Harvey Weinstein, Miramax Films chairman, to whom Smith gave the script.
He founded Project Greenlight with Affleck to find and fund worthwhile film projects from novice filmmakers.
Though sometimes seen as typecast in "pretty boy" parts aimed at the teenage market, Damon has been known to stray from the mainstream in his choice of roles, such as his portrayal of homosexual sociopath Tom Ripley in The Talented Mr. Ripley, and a fallen angel who waxes pop culture as intellectual subject matter in Dogma, in which he co-starred with Affleck (1999). Damon was also played amnesiac spy Jason Bourne in the successful action movies The Bourne Identity and The Bourne Supremacy, with a third sequel expected in 2007.
In September 2005, he became engaged to his long-term girlfriend, model Luciana Barroso.
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