It is a fact that Matt Damon is my favorite among the many holly wood actors specially in my generation. If there were Robert de Niro, Jack Nicholson, Clint Eastwood and Tom Hanks, who I respect too because of their talent and skills in acting not to mention the unforgettable films they had, in my time, there is only Matt. First saw him at School Ties...followed by The Talented Mr. Ripley, I definitely love his work. Like I said in my previous entry here in my blog, I saw almost all his movies and was impressed. For me, he is not only a good actor, but an intelligent actor, for he chose his role very well. Good Will Hunting will forever be my number one movie.:)
I should have posted some things about him earlier but, I guess this is the time to get to know him once again.
Who is Matt Damon?
Location:
New York, NY
Birthday:
October 8, 1970
Matt Damon 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 Damon garnered multiple Best Actor nominations, including the Academy Award, for his lead performance in the film.
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, Damon received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and was named Sexiest Man Alive by People magazine.
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 English, Scottish, Finnish, and Swedish ancestry, and is a distant cousin of actor Ben Affleck. He has a brother, Kyle, who is an accomplished sculptor and artist. He and his family lived in Newton for the first two years of his life. After his parents divorced, Damon and his brother moved with their mother 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 narrated.
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 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, 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 Damon recalls that, "Mr. Speca always seemed to trust Ben [Affleck] with the biggest roles and longest speeches."
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," Damon has said.
Matt Damon's Agent: Patrick Whitesell
Likes Poker, enjoys Golf, Huge Red Sox Fan, loves 30 Rock show.
Favourite directors to work with: Paul Greengrass, Clint Eastwood, Steven Soderbergh, Gus Van Sant and Francis Ford Coppola.
Damon carefully selects his projects based on the filmmakers he wants to work with, rather than the box office or awards potential. (newsinfilm.com)
Following the directing success of The Town, Ben Affleck is at the very top of the list of directors that Matt would love to work with.
Matt's take on life:
“The tagline is that ‘Democracy is not a spectator sport,’” Matt says. “That’s what I would want, more than anything, my kids to take away. This country is about participation, activism, understanding the history of the country, understanding your place in that history, being involved and being a productive part of the American experience.” (okmagazine.com)
When you're a celebrity, "You start to feel a level of responsibility to direct attention to things that actually matter more than to silly things like who you're dating." (people.com)
"I can’t think of any more important value to instill in our children than the desire to help others. I feel strongly about setting an example for them. Real problems can be solved by the next generation if we instill in them the right values. I’m not a politician, and I don’t want to tell anybody how to live. But I must say, all these years later, I still think Gandhi had the right idea: No matter how small the contribution we make may seem, it’s crucial that we all do our part." (parade.com)
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