Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Matt Damon Biography

Matthew Paige "Matt" Damon (born October 8, 1970) is an American actor, screenwriter, and philanthropist whose career was launched following the success of the film Good Will Hunting (1997), from a screenplay he co-wrote with friend Ben Affleck. The pair won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and the Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay for their work and Matt Damon received multiple Best Actor nominations, including the Academy Award, for his lead performance in the film.

Matt Damon
Matt Damon
Matt Damon has since starred in commercially successful films such as Saving Private Ryan (1998), the Ocean's trilogy, and the Bourne series, while also gaining critical acclaim for his performances in dramas such as Syriana (2005), The Good Shepherd (2006), and The Departed (2006). He garnered a Golden Globe nomination for portraying the title character in The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) and was nominated for an Academy Award as a supporting actor in Invictus (2009). He is one of the top forty highest grossing actors of all time. In 2007, Matt Damon received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and was named Sexiest Man Alive by People magazine.

Matt Damon has been actively involved in charitable work, including the ONE Campaign, H2O Africa Foundation, and Water.org.

Early life

Matt Damon was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the son of Kent Telfer Damon, a stockbroker, and Nancy Carlsson-Paige, an early childhood education professor at Lesley University. Damon is of Scottish, English, Finnish, and Swedish ancestry, and is a distant cousin of actors Ben Affleck and Casey Affleck. He has a brother, Kyle, who is an accomplished sculptor and artist. He and his family moved to Newton and lived there for two years. After his parents divorced, Damon and his brother moved with their mother back to Cambridge, where they lived in a six-family communal house. Damon grew up near Ben Affleck, a close friend since childhood and collaborator on several films, and historian and author Howard Zinn, whose biographical film You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train and audio version of A People's History of the United States Damon later narrated.

Matt Damon took to role-playing as a child partly because his mother raised him "by the book," which made him feel as though "you couldn’t define yourself, because you already had been defined by her." He attended Cambridge Alternative School (now Graham & Parks) and then Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, where he was a disciplined student but had a "terrifying" first two years due to his short height at the time. As a lonely adolescent, Matt Damon has described feeling "such pain in wanting to belong somewhere and not belonging." Damon performed as an actor in several high school theater productions; he has credited his drama teacher at Rindge and Latin, Gerry Speca, as an important artistic influence, even though Matt Damon recalls that, "Mr. Speca always seemed to trust Ben Affleck with the biggest roles and longest speeches."

Matt Damon attended Harvard University from 1988 to 1992 but did not graduate. While at Harvard, he studied English and lived in Lowell House. He took part in student theater, appearing in plays such as Burn This in Winthrop House and A... My Name is Alice (in one of the three male roles usually performed by women). Damon dropped out of the university to pursue his acting career in Los Angeles because he mistakenly expected Geronimo: An American Legend to become a big success. "By the time I figured out I had made the wrong decision, it was too late. I was living out here with a bunch of actors, and we were all scrambling to make ends meet," Matt Damon has said.

Acting career

Matt Damon
Matt Damon
Early years
Matt Damon's first film role came in 1988 when he was eighteen, with a single line of dialogue in the romantic comedy Mystic Pizza. As a student at Harvard University, he continued to pursue acting and performed small roles in projects such as the TNT original film Rising Son and the ensemble prep-school drama School Ties. In 1992, he landed a big part in Geronimo: An American Legend with Gene Hackman and Jason Patric. Four years later, he auditioned for a small role in Cutthroat Island, but was turned away. Damon next appeared as an opiate-addicted soldier in 1996's Courage Under Fire. He was required to lose 40 pounds (18 kg) in 100 days (for only two days of filming). After following a self-prescribed diet and fitness regimen to lose the weight, Damon was told after filming that he was fortunate his heart did not shrink. He took medication for several years afterwards to correct the stress inflicted on his adrenal gland. Courage Under Fire gained him some critical notice, as The Washington Post labeled his performance "impressive;" Damon has stated that it was worthwhile to risk his health in order to properly portray his character and show the industry how committed he was to his work as an actor.

Breakthrough
During the early 1990s, Matt Damon and Affleck wrote a screenplay about a young math genius, which they then pitched around Hollywood for a long time. Receiving advice from director Rob Reiner, screenwriter William Goldman, and their friend writer/director Kevin Smith, the two made changes to the script. The script eventually became Good Will Hunting (1997), and received nine Academy Awards nominations, earning Matt Damon and Affleck Oscars for Best Original Screenplay. Damon was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for the same film, which also netted an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for co-star Robin Williams. He and Affleck were each paid salaries of $600,000, while the film grossed over $225 million at the worldwide box office. The two later parodied their roles from the film in Kevin Smith's 2001 movie Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.

Also in 1997, Matt Damon was the lead in the critically acclaimed drama The Rainmaker, where he was recognized by the Los Angeles Times as "a talented young actor on the brink of stardom." After meeting Matt Damon on the set of Good Will Hunting, director Steven Spielberg cast Damon as the titular character in the 1998 World War II film Saving Private Ryan.

Hollywood star
Matt Damon has become known for choosing a wide variety of film roles, from his portrayal of Patricia Highsmith's anti-hero Tom Ripley in The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) to a fallen angel who discusses pop culture as intellectual subject matter with Affleck in Dogma (1999); from a conjoined twin in Stuck on You (2003), which got a mixed critical reception, to the low budget experimental film Gerry (2002), which he co-wrote with Casey Affleck and Gus Van Sant. Matt Damon garnered generally positive critical reaction for his Golden Globe-nominated portrayal of Ripley, with Variety stating, "Damon outstandingly conveys his character's slide from innocent enthusiasm into cold calculation."

Matt Damon
Matt Damon
Matt Damon's attempts at essaying leading characters in romantic dramas such as 2000's All the Pretty Horses and The Legend of Bagger Vance were commercially and critically unsuccessful. Variety said of his work in All the Pretty Horses: "Damon just doesn't quite seem like a young man who's spent his life amidst the dust and dung of a Texas cattle ranch. Nor does he strike any sparks with Penelope Cruz." He was similarly deemed "uncomfortable being the center" of Robert Redford's The Legend of Bagger Vance.

From 2001 to 2007, Matt Damon gained wider international recognition as part of two major film franchises. He co-starred as thief Linus Caldwell, alongside George Clooney, Brad Pitt, and Julia Roberts, in Steven Soderbergh's 2001 remake of the Rat Pack's 1960 caper film Ocean's 11; the successful crime dramedy spawned two sequels, Ocean's Twelve (2004) and Ocean's Thirteen (2007). He played amnesiac assassin Jason Bourne in the hit action thrillers The Bourne Identity (2002), The Bourne Supremacy (2004), and The Bourne Ultimatum (2007). Entertainment Weekly placed Damon as an "action star" on its end-of-the-decade, "best-of" list, saying, "When he first signed on as the ass-kicking amnesiac Jason Bourne in 2002, no one would've predicted that Damon would become the decade's best mixer of brawn and brains. Shows what we know." In August 2007, financial magazine Forbes created a list of actors who generated the best box office performance related to their salaries; the list placed Matt Damon as the most bankable star of the actors reviewed, revealing that Matt Damon had averaged USD29 at the box office for every dollar he earned for his last three films.

Matt Damon with Robert De Niro in Berlin in February 2007 for the premiere of The Good Shepherd
Damon played a fictionalized version of Wilhelm Grimm in Terry Gilliam's fantasy adventure The Brothers Grimm (2005), which was a critically panned commercial failure; The Washington Post concluded, "Damon, constantly flashing his newscaster's teeth and flaunting a fake, 'Masterpiece Theatre' dialect, comes across like someone who got lost on the way to an audition for a high school production of 'The Pirates of Penzance.'" Later that year, he appeared as an energy analyst in Syriana. In 2006, Damon joined Robert De Niro in The Good Shepherd as a career CIA officer, and played an undercover mobster working for the Massachusetts State Police in Martin Scorsese's The Departed, a remake of the Hong Kong police thriller Infernal Affairs. Assessing his work in the two films, Manohla Dargis of The New York Times wrote that Damon "does what few stars with his kind of billing do: he disappears." The Departed was a success amongst critics and audiences alike.

Matt Damon had an uncredited cameo in Francis Ford Coppola's Youth Without Youth (2007) and another cameo in the 2008 Che Guevara biopic Che. He lent his voice to the English version of the animated film Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea, which was released in the United States in August 2009. He also made a guest appearance in 2009 on the sixth season finale of Entourage as himself, where he tries to pressure Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier) into donating to his charity OneXOne—a real foundation for which Damon is an ambassador—and gets increasingly irritated when Chase does not seem to comply.

Matt Damon
Matt Damon
Matt Damon next appeared in Steven Soderbergh's dark comedy, The Informant! (2009), in which his Golden Globe-nominated work was described by Entertainment Weekly as such: "The star – who has quietly and steadily turned into a great Everyman actor – is in nimble control as he reveals his character's deep crazies." Also in 2009, Damon portrayed South Africa national rugby union team captain François Pienaar in the Clint Eastwood-directed Nelson Mandela film Invictus, which is based on the 2008 John Carlin book Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Changed a Nation and features Morgan Freeman as Mandela. Invictus earned Matt Damon an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. The New Republic observed, "It is not a demanding role, but the ever-more-actorly Matt Damon brings it off with low-key charm and integrity."

In 2010, Matt Damon re-teamed with director Paul Greengrass, who directed him in the Bourne Supremacy and Bourne Ultimatum, for the action thriller Green Zone, which flopped commercially and received ambivalent reception from critics.

In motion pictures that feature him either as a leading actor or as a supporting co-star, his films have grossed a total of U.S.$1.94 to U.S.$2.42 billion (based on counting his roles as strictly lead or including supporting roles, respectively) at the North American box office, placing him in the top forty grossing actors of all time.

Matt Damon has appeared as a guest star in an episode of Arthur, titled The Making of Arthur, as himself. During Season 5 of 30 Rock, he appeared as guest star in the role of Liz Lemon's boyfriend in the episodes "I Do I Do," "The Fabian Strategy," "Live Show," and "Double Edged Sword."

Matt Damon's 2010 projects included Clint Eastwood's Hereafter and the Coen Brothers' remake of the 1969 John Wayne-starring Western True Grit; the latter movie started filming in March 2010 and was released in December of that year.

In 2011, he starred in The Adjustment Bureau and We Bought a Zoo.

Upcoming films
Matt Damon will next work with frequent collaborator Steven Soderbergh on a project as the longtime Liberace love interest, Scott Thorsen, opposite Michael Douglas in an upcoming film centered on the pianist's life. He will also star in Elysium.

Matt Damon Hot Pictures

Matthew Paige "Matt" Damon (born October 8, 1970) is an American actor, screenwriter, and philanthropist whose career was launched following the success of the film Good Will Hunting (1997), from a screenplay he co-wrote with friend Ben Affleck. The pair won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and the Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay for their work and Matt Damon received multiple Best Actor nominations, including the Academy Award, for his lead performance in the film.

Below you can find Matt Damon Hot Pictures, hope you like them. I'll be updating the blog with latest Matt Damon Hot Pictures as often as possible.

Matt Damon Hot Pictures

Matt Damon Hot Pictures

Matt Damon Hot Pictures

Matt Damon Hot Pictures

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Matt Damon Best Pictures

Matthew Paige "Matt" Damon (born October 8, 1970) is an American actor, screenwriter, and philanthropist whose career was launched following the success of the film Good Will Hunting (1997), from a screenplay he co-wrote with friend Ben Affleck. The pair won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and the Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay for their work and Matt Damon received multiple Best Actor nominations, including the Academy Award, for his lead performance in the film.

Below you can find Matt Damon Best Pictures, hope you like them. I'll be updating the blog with latest Matt Damon Best Pictures as often as possible.

Matt Damon Best Pictures

Matt Damon Best Pictures

Matt Damon Best Pictures

Matt Damon Best Pictures

Matt Damon Best Pictures

Matt Damon Pictures HD

Matthew Paige "Matt" Damon (born October 8, 1970) is an American actor, screenwriter, and philanthropist whose career was launched following the success of the film Good Will Hunting (1997), from a screenplay he co-wrote with friend Ben Affleck. The pair won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and the Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay for their work and Matt Damon received multiple Best Actor nominations, including the Academy Award, for his lead performance in the film.

Below you can find Matt Damon Pictures HD, hope you like them. I'll be updating the blog with latest Matt Damon Pictures HD as often as possible.

Matt Damon Pictures HD

Matt Damon Pictures HD

Matt Damon Pictures HD

Matt Damon Pictures HD

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Matt Damon Pictures Latest

Matthew Paige "Matt" Damon (born October 8, 1970) is an American actor, screenwriter, and philanthropist whose career was launched following the success of the film Good Will Hunting (1997), from a screenplay he co-wrote with friend Ben Affleck. The pair won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and the Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay for their work and Matt Damon received multiple Best Actor nominations, including the Academy Award, for his lead performance in the film.

Below you can find Matt Damon Pictures Latest, hope you like them. I'll be updating the blog with latest Matt Damon Pictures Latest as often as possible.

Matt Damon Pictures Latest

Matt Damon Pictures Latest

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Matt Damon Best Wallpapers

Matthew Paige "Matt" Damon (born October 8, 1970) is an American actor, screenwriter, and philanthropist whose career was launched following the success of the film Good Will Hunting (1997), from a screenplay he co-wrote with friend Ben Affleck. The pair won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and the Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay for their work and Matt Damon received multiple Best Actor nominations, including the Academy Award, for his lead performance in the film.

Below you can find Matt Damon Best Wallpapers to decorate your desktop, hope you like them. I'll be updating the blog with latest Matt Damon Best Wallpapers as often as possible.

Matt Damon Best Wallpapers

Matt Damon Best Wallpapers

Matt Damon Best Wallpapers

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Matt Damon Hot Wallpapers

Matthew Paige "Matt" Damon (born October 8, 1970) is an American actor, screenwriter, and philanthropist whose career was launched following the success of the film Good Will Hunting (1997), from a screenplay he co-wrote with friend Ben Affleck. The pair won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and the Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay for their work and Matt Damon received multiple Best Actor nominations, including the Academy Award, for his lead performance in the film.

Below you can find Matt Damon Hot Wallpapers to decorate your desktop, hope you like them. I'll be updating the blog with latest Matt Damon Hot Wallpapers as often as possible.

Matt Damon Hot Wallpapers

Matt Damon Hot Wallpapers

Matt Damon Hot Wallpapers

Matt Damon Hot Wallpapers

Matt Damon Hot Wallpapers