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Biography
He was born Matthew Paige Damon on
October 8th, 1970, in the Cambridge area of Boston, Massachusetts. His
father, Kent, was an investment banker and tax prepare, while his
mother, Nancy Carlsson-Paige (hence the middle name) was Professor of
Education at Lesley College, specializing in early education. Matt has
one brother, Kyle, three years his senior and now a sculptor.
For the first two years of his life, Matt lived in the seriously
expensive Newton district of Boston. When he was 2, though, his parents
divorced and he moved, with Nancy, to nearby Cambridge. This area, where
Harvard is situated, was also well-to-do, but not QUITE as rich as
Newton. Nancy's plan was for Matt and Kyle to be well-provided-for, but
not shut away from the real world. Thus one neighbor was Howard Zinn,
author of A People's History Of The United States, while opposite Chez
Matt was a halfway house.
Matt was a happy, if shy child. With his
studies overseen by his mother (later described by Affleck as "an
activist lefty"), he was a Straight-A man throughout his education.
His father was heavily involved too, particularly in steeping the boy in
baseball history. When he later appeared as an extra in Field Of Dreams,
Matt would pluck some blades of grass from Boston Red Sox' legendary
Fenway Park and present them to his delighted father.
Matt, of course, played Little League as
soon as he could and, along with all fans of the Red Sox, has spent most
of his Autumns weeping with rage and humiliation as the play-offs turn
bad yet again and those damn Yankees win through. But, beyond his
parents, there was another major influence on Matt's early life. At 10,
he met a guy, two years his junior, from two blocks down the road - Ben
Affleck.
The pair did EVERYTHING together. They played baseball, for real and on
video, and Dungeons And Dragons. They attended trashy movie
double-features, and they both attended the pricey Rindge And Latin prep
school. And it was here that Matt really took to acting.
He'd always enjoyed performing. Indeed, he remembers as a child trying
to organize plays with his brother and the local kids. "There are
all these pictures of me and my neighbor dressed as firemen," he
later told Premiere "and he's always standing there next to me, not
really knowing why we're doing it". Yet Damon didn't simply have an
early understanding of the satisfaction to be gleaned from putting on a
good show.
To him, an actor's life, even Hollywood
stardom, was a very real proposition. After all, Affleck's father had
partied with Dustin Hoffman and Ben himself was in adverts at age 8, TV
movies before his teens and had appeared with Madeline Kahn and Armand
Assante while still at school. So Damon WORKED at acting, just as he
worked at all his lessons. Gerry Specca, his drama coach at Rindge And
Latin, remarked upon his "great potential and wonderful
talent".
Along with Affleck, Damon took work as an extra in any locally-shot
movie that would have him. Then, at 16, he decided to go for it, take
off for New York and the bright lights. His parents, deeply disapproving
of his career choice, would not fund the trip. But Damon had just scored
an advert and placed the money in the joint account he and Affleck used
for audition-expenses. He could afford it.
It began fantastically well. In New York, Affleck introduced him to his
agent and he was instantly cast in Mystic Pizza, with an
about-to-explode Julia Roberts. There was also The Good Mother, directed
by Leonard "Spock" Nimoy and starring Diane Keaton as a mum
who must prove herself in court. And . . . that was it. Damon's bright
beginning led to absolutely nothing - a pattern he would repeat for the
best part of a decade.
Matt returned home to carry out Plan B
(unlike Affleck - Damon would always have a Plan B). Those Straight-As
had won him a place at prestigious Harvard. Once he graduated from
there, he reckoned, he could move on to the Yale School Of Drama, Alma
Mater of the grand likes of Meryl Streep and Sigourney Weaver. Once
more, he threw himself into his studies, eventually receiving one of the
first varsity letters in dramatics - a massive deal, by his own
admission.
Extremely practical, Damon was also looking for parts, and getting them.
In Rising Son, he got into trouble for dropping out of pre-med school
just as his father, Brian Dennehy, was made redundant. Then came School
Ties, where a Jewish boy battles for respect at a rich prep school. The
movie featured the pre-stellar likes of Brendan
Fraser and Chris O'Donnell, as well as Damon and, naturally, Affleck.
Then came a big, big opportunity - a starring role (along with narrating
duties) in Walter Hill's glorious epic of the Old West, Geronimo: An
American Legend.
With this part in the bag, Damon quit Harvard with 12 credits still
needed for graduation. He took off for Los Angeles, believing he was
made. How could Geronimo fail? There was Hill, director of 48 Hours and
The Warriors: there were Gene Hackman and Jason Patric: there was Wes
Studi who'd just broken through in Dances With Wolves and Last Of The
Mohicans: AND there was the eco-friendly, deeply spiritual, pro-Native
American message. Surely everything was set for an avalanche of Oscars.
But, for the second time, nothing happened. Geronimo was a great movie,
but bizarrely overlooked. Damon, now with Affleck crashing on his couch
(which he did for YEARS), went looking again. Now began a dark time for
Matt. He turned down a big-money role in Sam Raimi's The Quick And The
Dead, only to see Leonardo DiCaprio snap up the part and, along with
co-star Russell
Crowe, race towards stardom. He lost out to Joaquin Phoenix over To
Die For, as he would to Edward Norton over Primal Fear. The only part
that came his way was as a member of the Calloway family in The Good Old
Boys, a Western directed by and starring Tommy
Lee Jones.
During filming, sat in a Texas hotel
room, he wondered why he was earning less than when he was 19, how it
had all failed to go right. His thoughts turned, as they often had done
before, to writing a breakthrough role for himself. In fact, they turned
to a breakthrough role he had ALREADY written for himself. Back at
Harvard, for an English class, Damon had begun a script about a young
maths prodigy working as a janitor at Harvard. Later, he'd worked on it
some more with Affleck (whose father, as an ex-Harvard janitor, had
partly inspired the tale). It was more or less completed by 1992 (it was
originally a thriller), but the pair kept returning to refine it. They
tried many times to sell it, too, but no one was buying. Now, in the
throes of desperate disappointment, Damon decided to give the script,
Good Will Hunting, another go.
At last, they found a taker. Trouble was, Castle Rock wanted the movie,
but they didn't want Damon and Affleck to star in it (which pretty much
defeated their purpose). The pair just weren't famous enough, and had no
decent recommendations. Then, all of a sudden, things happened to change
all that. While Damon had been battling for classy roles in big
projects, Affleck had gone the indie route, appearing in several of
Kevin Smith's movies.
Now Smith took Good Will Hunting to
Harvey Weinstein of Miramax. Weinstein respected Smith, liked the story,
liked the price. And, perhaps most importantly, he saw that Damon and
Affleck were no longer the nobodies they had been. At least, Damon
wasn't.
While shopping Good Will Hunting around for the last time (Damon claims
he was on the verge of quitting), Matt's profile was raised
considerably. First, he scored a role as a junkie Gulf War vet in
Courage Under Fire, starring Denzel
Washington and Meg Ryan. He'd suffered for the part, rather
dangerously losing 40 pounds without the help of a professional
nutritionist (it took years for his metabolism to return to normal), but
his efforts were worthwhile. He was excellent and thoroughly
eye-catching. Unfortunately, despite Washington singing Matt's praises
in every interview, the critics ignored him.
To Damon, this was an awful blow. He felt that no matter how hard he
tried, he could get no further. But, thankfully, his efforts now paid
off. Being an ambitious and canny sort, Damon had noted how his friend
Matthew McConnaughey had hit paydirt with A Time To Kill, an adaptation
of a hugely popular John Grisham novel. He began to chart the course of
all the other Grisham projects in Hollywood, putting himself into
contention wherever possible.
Eventually, he found himself on a
short-list of two to star in Francis Ford Coppola's take on The
Rainmaker. Ordinarily, this would be exciting. Sadly, his rival was once
again Ed Norton. "I didn't think I had anything on him," Damon
told Premiere later "so I was really surprised and happy when I got
it - literally jumping up and down".
Damon, of course, seized his chance. To
pick up the Southern accent necessary, he went down to Knoxville,
Tennessee, and worked for free in a bar, listening intently to the
customers. He even hired one of them as his voice-coach. But whether or
not he was going to be any good in The Rainmaker, just getting the role
gave him a new stature in the industry. Miramax decided to pay him and
Affleck $500,000 for Good Will Hunting. Robin
Williams was onboard, Drugstore Cowboy's Gus Van Sant was to direct.
Best of all, Damon could now star as Will Hunting, the intellectual
superstar trapped in a South Boston body, with Affleck as his best buddy
- first holding him back, then finally pushing him out into a better
world.
Released on Christmas Day, 1997, Good Will Hunting was a mega-smash,
appealing to all those who like to believe that you don't need high
birth to reach high places. Damon and Affleck became heroes to underdogs
everywhere (odd, given their privileged backgrounds), and the movie soon
shot over the $100 million mark. Come the Oscars in 1998, it received no
fewer than nine nominations. In the Best Actor category, Damon was
beaten by Jack Nicholson's efforts in As Good As It Gets, but Robin
Williams snapped up Best Supporting Actor, thereby revitalising a
career that was floundering in a sea of schmaltz. Damon and Affleck,
fittingly, were honoured together, sharing the Oscar for Best Original
Screenplay. Their down-home boys-next-door reputation was further sealed
when they turned up to the ceremony with their mums.
Also nominated was British actress Minnie Driver, who Damon had been
dating for some time. Not only did she not win, but she'd also had to
face the humiliation of being dumped by Damon, live on the Oprah Winfrey
Show. Now, THIS was a strange story. In public, Damon had and has always
been extremely reticent about his relationships. You might even call him
a gentleman. So, to announce his split with Driver on TV was most unlike
him - SO unlike him, in fact, that you feel there were ulterior
motives.
Was it for press at Oscar-time? Did
Damon, convinced that he stood no chance against the weighty likes of
Nicholson, Dustin Hoffman, Robert Duvall and a resurgent Peter Fonda
anyway, risk appearing like a right meanie to boost the chance of Best
Movie and Best Director? Was he so very confident of the screenplay
award? Did Driver accept the real-life role of the reject in order to
tug at the heart-strings of Academy members?
So, by 1998, Damon, Affleck and Good Will Hunting were hot property. But
it must be reiterated that Damon was already well on his way. In the
same way that the super-smart Harvey Weinstein had recognized the
industry buzz around Matt, and his tremendous abilities (he was proved
correct by Good Will Hunting becoming Miramax's biggest ever grosser),
so an even smarter power-monger had caught on to Damon's potential.
Before the Oscars, before the big money, Steven Spielberg had already
cast Matt in his forthcoming war epic, Saving Private Ryan. Indeed,
Damon was to BE Private Ryan, reluctantly rescued by Tom
Hanks.
What a year. Not only did Good Will
Hunting remain on screens throughout most of 1998, but the unbelievably
brutal Saving Private Ryan was the most talked-about movie of the year.
AND there was another US Number One in Rounders, a gambling drama in
which Damon starred alongside his former nemesis Ed Norton. Damon did
actually spend $10,000 buying himself into the Texas Hold 'Em tournament
at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas, but was knocked out on the
first day. Socially too, Damon and Affleck were in the spotlight - Ben
having hooked up with a post-Pitt Paltrow while Matt made hay with Winona
Ryder.
Ever the good guy, Damon would never talk
about this relationship, desperately wanting to avoid stories being
told. But stories were told anyway, including one particularly vile one.
Damon, it was said, was hopelessly jealous of Mark
Wahlberg, a fellow Bostonian who, unlike Matt, was the proud
possessor of genuine street-cred. Preppie Matt obsessed over Wahlberg so
badly that a squabble began between the two, with Ryder eventually
getting so tired of the silly spat that she went to Wahlberg to ask him
to make peace. Sadly - and this is the vile bit - Ryder allegedly fell
for Wahlberg's charms, which didn't go down well with Damon AT ALL.
How Hollywood relationships survive for a couple of days with this kind
of rumor flying around is a mystery. But Damon and Ryder kept it
together for over two years. Though at one point engaged, they
eventually split in early 2000, Damon denying that Penelope
Cruz, his co-star in All The Pretty Horses, had anything to do with
it. He did find love again fairly soon, becoming engaged to Odessa
Whitmire, Ben
Affleck's Personal Assistant. The couple became close, apparently,
when Affleck was forced to enter rehab.
The Billy
Bob Thornton-directed All The Pretty Horses, where Damon played a
young man seeking a better life down in Mexico, and finding both love
and deadly danger, was the third in a run of movies that proved he was
looking to forge a serious career. After Rounders, he appeared briefly
with Affleck in Kevin Smith's Dogma (they also turn up in Chasing Amy
and Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back), but his next big "solo"
role was as the weird and sinister Thomas Ripley, murdering and taking
the place of playboy Jude
Law in The Talented Mr Ripley. Next came The Legend Of Bagger Vance,
where Matt was Rannulph Junuh, a former golfing prodigy who must refind
his game in time for a shoot-out against the best players in the world
(Damon played golf five hours a day for six weeks in preparation).
While on set, Damon invited along his
father and, one day, between shots, the pair began tossing a baseball
around. Who should wander over and silently join in but Robert Redford,
not only the director of Bagger Vance but also the star of one of the
Damons' favourite films - baseball epic The Natural. They threw quietly
for a while, but soon Kent could take no more, shouting "I'm having
a catch with fucking Roy Hobbs!" (Redford's character in The
Natural).
2001 would see him hit the heights in Steven Soderbergh's snappy
ensemble piece Ocean's Eleven. An update of the Frank Sinatra original,
this created a new Rat Pack, with George
Clooney gathering a crack crime squad to rob Vegas casino owner Andy
Garcia. Alongside Brad
Pitt, Julia
Roberts (the star, remember of Damon's first ever movie, Mystic
Pizza) and Don Cheadle, Matt would play a furtive pickpocket, essential
in the preparation of the heist.
Next, having turned down the lead in The
Majestic - the part going to Jim
Carrey - he provided a voiceover for the movie, then another for the
hit animation Spirit: Stallion Of The Cimarron. Then came Gerry, another
collaboration with Good Will Hunting director Gus Van Sant. Here Damon
and Casey Affleck played two guys, both calling each other Gerry, who
get lost in the desert. Contemplating the angst of the younger
generation, the movie was hailed by critics as a visual masterpiece.
With Damon's success came a desire to give something back, and this
manifested itself in Project Greenlight, a competition that would allow
its winner to make a movie. Finance would be raised by documenting the
process and showing it as Reality TV. It was a huge success, with
Project Greenlight 2 (which led to the making of The Battle Of Shaker
Heights) gaining Damon and partner Affleck an Emmy nomination.
Damon was now also actively involved
(still with Affleck) in production, and next came The Third Wheel, a
comedy where Luke Wilson's first date with Denise Richards is radically
altered by an apparently crazy homeless guy who joins them. Damon,
naturally, would make a cameo appearance.
Following this came his own personal breakthrough when he headlined the
strange Robert Ludlum thriller, The Bourne Identity. Here, washed up on
a beach with a bad bout of amnesia, and discovering himself to be in
possession of serious language and martial arts skills, he had to both
recover his memory and avoid all the assassins trying to whack him for,
well, he couldn't remember what for. For the role of Jason Bourne, he
was paid a whopping $10 million - a far cry from the $600,000 he got for
Rounders.
With The Bourne Identity taking over $27 million on its first weekend,
and smashing through the $100 million barrier with ease, plans were
immediately afoot to make two sequels. In the meantime, there was
Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind, the directorial debut of his Ocean's
Eleven buddy George
Clooney. This would adapt the outrageous memoirs of gameshow host
Chuck Barris, who claimed to have been an assassin for the Feds. Damon
and fellow Clooney-buddy Brad
Pitt would appear in flashback, on TV as contestants in Barris's The
Dating Game. Matt would also experiment with a trip to London and a
spell on the stage in Kenneth Lonergan's This Is Our Youth, concerning a
trio of rich and wayward kids in 1980s New York. He'd be joined in the
venture by Casey Affleck and Summer Phoenix, the three of them replacing
Hayden Christensen, Jake Gyllenhaal and Anna Paquin.
2003 would be a different kind of year
for Damon. First there'd be Stuck On You, a Farrelly brothers comedy
that saw him and Greg Kinnear as Siamese twins, joined at the hip and
sharing a liver. They run a successful diner on Martha's Vineyard but
Kinnear has ambitions to be an actor and drags a reluctant Damon off to
Hollywood. Here Kinnear's picked as Cher's co-star in a TV series she
hates and thinks he will sink, but when word gets out of Kinnear's
condition (Damon is hidden behind scenery and edited out) he's a big
hit. Meanwhile, there's romance trouble as both guys find hot babes -
with inevitable consequences.
If it sounds un-PC, it was, but it was
also kind-hearted and wholly unashamed, a brave and funny flick. The
year would also see Matt'n'Ben inspire a play, called Matt And Ben.
Here, the pair were portrayed by women, Damon being seen as super-bright
and Affleck as a dopey party animal, and the script of Good Will Hunting
is seen to literally fall into their laps out of the sky. Damon took it
in his stride. Well, he had no choice as all his superstar friends had
been to see it.
2004 would be another big year. He'd begin it with a brilliant cameo
role in the teen sex comedy Eurotrip. Here he'd play a tattooed and
shaven-headed singer who's bedding the hero's girlfriend (thus
inadvertently causing the trip of the title), his peak moment being a
gig where he sings the hilarious and, for the hero, heartbreaking
"Scotty Doesn't Know", including the classic line "Scotty
doesn't know that Fiona and me do it in my van every Sunday". Damon
would also pop up very briefly in Jersey Girl, directed by old pal Kevin
Smith and starring Ben
Affleck. Featuring Affleck's then-girlfriend Jennifer
Lopez, the movie was seen as a follow-up to the couple's infamous
Gigli and (rather unfairly) washed away on the tide of scorn.
Damon's next effort showed just how far his and Affleck's career paths
had diverged. This was The Bourne Supremacy, a second Ludlum effort,
which opened with Bourne settled on an idyllic Goan beach with Franka
Potente. Quickly, though, this paradise is invaded, as Bourne is framed
for an assassination and must escape a series of lethal traps as he
tries to clear up the mess - a mess, naturally, that has something to do
with his former CIA employers. Once again, Damon kept it simple,
underplayed his character and added much-needed humanity to the Bourne
killing machine and, amazingly for a sequel, the film surpassed the
success of the original, raking in $176 million at the US box office.
Oddly, the triumph of The Bourne Supremacy proved to be a double-edged
sword. Damon was exhausted and asked the producers of his next project,
a follow-up to Ocean's Eleven, if his part could be shortened. There was
no chance. When it came to the generation of pure profit, Damon was at
this moment the equal of co-stars Clooney, Pitt and Roberts, and his
character, Linus Caldwell, would ask to play "a more central
role" in the gang as, threatened by former victim Andy Garcia, they
must pull off a triple heist in Europe in order to pay him back. Of
course, this gave Damon several opportunities to display his comic
talents as Caldwell's efforts to become a criminal mastermind were
endearingly bumbling and uncomprehending.
Ocean's Twelve would end a year of great
excitement for Damon. Having split from Odessa Whitmire, he began 2004
with actress Eva Mendes (who'd played Greg Kinnear's love interest in
Stuck On You) then, swearing to never again date an actress, moved on to
interior designer Luciana Barroso. Then there'd be the US presidential
election, where Damon would throw his money and support behind Democrat
loser John Kerry.
Onscreen, he'd be lampooned when a Matt
Damon puppet appeared in the South Park team's big hit Team America:
World Police. And then, attending Hugh Jackman's final performance in
the Tony-winning Broadway hit The Boy From Oz, he'd be called upon by
the star to join him in a lap-dance for the soon-to-retire Barbara
Walters. Oh, and there'd be more glory for the Damon family when his
uncle, George Brunstad became, at 70, the oldest person to swim the
English Channel.
Another reason for Damon's exhaustion before Ocean's Twelve was that,
before The Bourne Supremacy, he had filmed the long-delayed and
much-anticipated The Brothers Grimm. This saw the return of the great
Terry Gilliam, as he re-imagined the brothers (Damon and Heath Ledger)
as con-men who convince villagers they're being persecuted by evil
monsters and then get paid as exorcists. Of course, then it gets serious
as they're enlisted to fight off real monster Monica
Bellucci, a witch queen who's discovered the secret of eternal life
but needs a constant supply of virgins' blood on tap to ward off the
ravages of extreme age. A marketing possibility for the Olay company, if
ever there was one.
After all the internal squabbling and looming financial disaster you'd
expect from a big-budget Gilliam effort, The Brothers Grimm would
finally appear in 2005. So too would Syriana, based on Robert Bauer's
book See No Evil: The True Story Of A Ground Soldier In The CIA's War On
Terrorism.
This would see George
Clooney as Bauer (interestingly, Clooney had become something of a
mentor to Damon, just as he had been to Damon's old rival Mark
Wahlberg), with Damon as an oil price analyst who suffers terrible
family tragedy and is drawn into the dark politics of the Middle East.
Directed by Stephen Gaghan, writer of Steven Soderbergh's Traffic, the
movie would deal with American foreign policy, government intrigue,
legal battles and shady oil deals, like Traffic interweaving the lives
of many disparate characters.
Following this, if schedules allowed, Damon would join up with Martin
Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio for The Departed, a remake of the Hong
Kong hit Infernal Affairs involving cops and Irish gangs in Boston.
There was also the chance that he'd star in Robert
De Niro's long-delayed history of the CIA, The Good Shepherd, a part
that had, for ages, been DiCaprio's.
It's clear that Matt Damon, who's worked so hard at his craft and
studies the industry so closely, will be around for many years to come.
As said, he's moved into executive production and has begun writing
again. One thing's for sure; having waited so long and come so close so
often, Matt Damon will do all he can to stay on top. ~ Dominic Wills
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