matt damon

Date of Birth

8 October 1970, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Birth Name

Matthew Paige Damon

Height

5' 10" (1.78 m)

Mini Biography

Matt Damon was born in 1970. His father, Kent Damon, a tax preparer, and his mother, Nancy Carlsson-Paige, a college professor, are now divorced. His older brother, Kyle (b. 1967), is a sculptor. Matt's first film role was a one-line part in Mystic Pizza (1988). Hollywood's power brokers realized his potential as a serious actor when they saw him play a Gulf War vet-turned-heroin addict in Courage Under Fire (1996). One of Matt's closest childhood friends was fellow young thespian Ben Affleck, who starred in Chasing Amy (1997). Damon and Affleck collaborated on the screenplay for Good Will Hunting (1997), in which they co-star.

IMDb Mini Biography By: Dennis Lewis

Mini Biography

Matthew Paige Damon, or better known to fans as Matt Damon was born on October 8, 1970, in Boston Massachusetts, USA to Kent Delfer Damon, a stockbroker, realtor and tax preparer, and Nancy Carlsso-Paige, an early childhood education professor at Lesley University. Matt has an older brother named Kyle who is now a sculptor. Unfortunately for Matt and his brother, their parents divorced in the year 1973.

The 5'10" star is of English, Finnish and Scottish ancestry. While his parents were still together, their family lived in Newton, before eventually settling for a divorce, where Damon and his brother moved with his mother to Cambridge. He grew up in a stable community back in Massachusetts. Matt also grew up near actor, Ben Affleck, when he was younger.

Matt attended Cambridge Ridge and Latin School which is located in Cambridge and he performed in a number of theater productions during his time there. Later on, he was accepted into Harvard University as an English major in the fall of 1988 and was supposed to graduate with the class of 1992. While in Harvard, kept on skipping classes to pursue acting projects, which included the TNT original film, Rising Son, and prep-school drama, School Ties. It was until his film, Geronimo: An American Legend, was expected to be a big success that he decided to drop out of university completely.

Arriving in Hollywood, Matt managed to get his first break with a part in the romantic comedy, Mystic Pizza. However, the film did not do too well and his film career failed to take off. Not letting failure discourage him from acting, he went for another audition, and managed to get a starring role in School Ties.

Up next for Matt was a role as a soldier who had problems with drug-addiction in the movie, Courage Under Fire. Matt had in fact lost forty pounds for his role which resulted in health problems. The following year, his garnered accolades for Good Will Hunting, a screenplay he had originally written for an English class at Harvard University. Good Will Hunting was nominated for 9 Academy Awards, one of which, Matt won for Best Original Screenplay along with Ben Affleck.

In the year 1998, Matt played the title role in Steven Spielberg's film, Saving Private Ryan, which was one of the most acclaimed films in that year. Matt had the opportunity of working with Tom Hanks and Vin Diesel while filming that movie. That same year, he starred as an earnest law student and reformed poker player in Rounders, starring opposite Edward Norton and John Malkovich.