Matt Damon Biography

Matt Damon and his high school pal Ben Affleck shared the best screenplay Oscar for writing the 1997 movie Good Will Hunting.

The two chums also starred in the film, and Matt Damon was nominated for best actor, adding to the general sense of prodigies-on-the-loose that surrounded the project.

Over the next few years, Damon’s earnest good looks and scoundrel’s grin helped make him a bona fide star. He was featured in the title role in Steven Spielberg‘s Saving Private Ryan (1998, with Tom Hanks); starred opposite Jude Law in The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999, with Gwyneth Paltrow); appeared with Sean Connery in Finding Forrester (2001); and showed up in Steven Soderbergh‘s remake of Ocean’s Eleven (2001) and its sequels Ocean’s Twelve (2004) and Ocean’s Thirteen (2007).

Matt Damon also got a big-budget franchise of his own, starring as the amnesiac superagent Jason Bourne in The Bourne Identity (2002, with Clive Owen), The Bourne Supremacy (2004, with Julia Stiles), The Bourne Ultimatum (2007, with David Strathairn) and Jason Bourne (2016).

In spite of big-time Hollywood success, Damon has not strayed from small independent projects and has appeared in several of Kevin Smith‘s movies, including Chasing Amy (1997), Dogma (1999) and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001).

Damon’s other films include Martin Scorsese‘s Boston crime epic The Departed (2006, with Jack Nicholson and Mark Wahlberg), Clint Eastwood‘s Invictus (2009, starring Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela, and another Oscar nomination for Damon), Soderbergh’s The Informant! (2009), True Grit (2010, starring Jeff Bridges) and The Martian (2016, and his third Oscar nomination).