Matt Damon net worth is $190 Million. Also know about Matt Damon bio, salary, height, age weight, relationship and more …

Matt Damon Wiki Biography

Among the biggest names in modern Hollywood, the American actor, screenwriter and producer Matthew Paige Damon was born on 8 October 1970 in Cambridge, Massachusetts,  and as Matt Damon he has earned numerous awards and countless more nominations for his various performances, including Damon’s acclaimed successful breakout role in the 1997 drama “Good Will Hunting”.

So just how rich is Matt Damon, as of early 2017? Authoritative sources indicate that Matt has accrued an estimated net worth of $190 million over the course of his career, which now spans close to 30 years, and which has included appearances in such hit films as Steven Spielberg’s 1998 war drama “Saving Private Ryan”, and one of Damon’s most celebrated roles as Tom Ripley in the 1999 “The Talented Mr. Ripley”. However, some truly lucrative endorsement deals have helped too – Damon was paid a staggering $150,000 for every second he appeared in a commercial for Nespresso. Damon leads the lifestyle to reflect his impressive wealth, owning a mansion in Los Angeles valued at $15 million, and another in Miami with an estimated price tag of $10.5 million – and is often seen in one of his three cars, a collection that includes the electric sports car Tesla Roadster.

Matt Damon is the child of stockbroker Kent Telfer Damon, and an early childhood education professor, Nancy Carlsson-Page. Growing up, Damon became fast friends with his distant cousin, future actor, director and screenwriter Ben Affleck. It was together with Affleck that Matt Damon first began to dabble in acting, appearing in several high school productions alongside him, and listing those early roles as one of the most important influences on his road to professional acting – although Damon has been quoted saying that their drama teacher always seemed to trust Affleck more in the end, giving him “the biggest roles and longest speeches.”

Whatever the case, Matt Damon made his film debut early, appearing in the 1988 romantic comedy “Mystic Pizza” when he was just 18. Throughout his university years – spent in Harvard pursuing a Bachelor of Arts degree – Damon continued to feature in television productions and films. Risking his health to lose 40 pounds in a hundred days, Matt Damon was noted for his dedication and impressive performance in the 1996 drama “Courage Under Fire”, in which he appeared alongside Denzel Washington and Lou Diamond Phillips. The next year Matt would finally find success in what is widely considered his breakout role, as the lead actor in the drama “Good Will Hunting”. Directed by Gus Van Sant and co-written by Damon and Ben Affleck, the film saw Damon star alongside Robin Williams in a film that won Damon his only Academy Award to date – for “Best Screenplay”, an award he shared with Affleck. Since then, Damon has gone on to a number of commercially successful and critically acclaimed appearances, including featuring alongside George Clooney and Brad Pitt in Steven Soderbergh’s “Ocean’s” trilogy, and taking the lead role in the “Bourne” trilogy. These continued successes have certainly gone a long way in boosting Damon’s already impressive net worth.

In his personal life, Matt Damon has been married to Argentinian actress Luciana Bozán Barroso since 2005, and they have three daughters. They currently live in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles.

IMDB Wikipedia “Best Screenplay” “Mystic Pizza” “The Great Wall” (2017) $75 Million 1970 2007 2016 5 ft 10 in (1.78 m) Academy Awards Academy Awards (1997) Actor Actors Alexia Barroso American Cinematheque Award (2010) American film directors Bachelor of Arts Ben Affleck Berlin International Film Festival (1998 Bourne Brad Pitt Cambridge Cinema of the United States Courage Under Fire Courage Under Fire (1996) Denzel Washington English American Film Film producer Finnish American George Clooney Geronimo: An American Legend (1993) Gia Zavala Damon Golden Globe Awards (1998) Good Will Hunting Good Will Hunting (1997) Gus Van Sant Hollywood Humanitas Prize (1997) Isabella Damon Kent Telfer Damon Kyle Damon Lou Diamond Phillips Luciana Barroso Luciana Barroso (m. 2005) Massachusetts Matt Damon Matt Damon Net Worth Matthew Paige “Matt” Damon Matthew Paige Damon Mystic Pizza (1988) Nancy Carlsson-Page National Board of Review Awards Nespresso Ocean’s Thirteen (2007) October 8 Robin Williams Saving Private Ryan Scandinavian American Scottish American Screenwriter Spokesperson Stella Damon Steven Soderbergh Steven Spielberg Swedish American Television Producer The Talented Mr. Ripley Tony Gilroy United States United States of America Voice Actor

Matt Damon Quick Info

Matt Damon Trademarks

1. Frequently plays highly intelligent characters, i.e. Will Hunting in ‘Good Will Hunting (1997)’, Tom Ripley in ‘The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)’, Jason Bourne in The Bourne Series, etc.
2. Frequently works with director Paul Greengrass
3. Often works with actors Ben Affleck and George Clooney

Matt Damon Quotes

• [advice from his high school acting teacher Gerry Speca] five words: just do your work kid. And he repeated that so many times to me and that is what I can always retreat to, that’s my touch stone, when in doubt, just focus on the work, if everything on the movie is going wrong, I’ll just make sure my work is tight and done.
• [on the best advice, his been given] when I was younger, everybody told me not to be an actor and to this day I say that to people who come up to me and say I’m thinking about going into acting, what’d you think? I say absolutely not. It’s a terrible idea don’t do it, because that’s what everyone said to me and I think if you’re going to make it in this business that is full of rejection and hardship you need to believe in yourself despite what everybody you love and trust tells you.
• [Why he came back to do another Bourne film] I said I wouldn’t do it without Paul Greengrass and it was always we’d talk about, we’ re always looking for projects for us to do together and after a while we felt like “we’re kind of like dicks if we don’t do another Bourne film. So when we knew we wanted to it became a question of what would the movie be? And what’s the story?, How would the characters interact? so it took a few more years to figure it out.
• [on living with 5 women, his wife and daughters]Yeah it’s a lot of estrogen, sometimes I need to talk a walk by myself.
• [5 ways he is not Jason Bourne] First all the languages he speaks, they’re all languages that I wish I spoke, the way he fights, I certainly can’t fight like that, his a lot more tortured than I am, I’ve got a great wife, and he definitely doesn’t have one, and I’ve got kids.
• [on the difference of getting in shape from the first Bourne movie to the most recent one] It’s a lot harder. I’m 45 years old, everything is harder. I remember during the first Bourne movie I was 29 and I boxed for six months, I was lifting weights and that’s just one of the hard parts. A lot of the hard parts was the diet: I love eating and going out, drinking good wine, eating good food with my wife, so that was my sacrifice but that’s not a lot to sacrifice because ultimately you get to make a movie you really want to make.
• The ingredients of my ideal taco, oh my god. Fantastic question. My ideal taco is actually the taco I’m not supposed to have which is the taco we have on taco night at my house. It’s the crunchy corn shell with the good meat, just ground beef in there. It’s all about the layering. The meats gotta be hot, and the cheese goes on first so that it melts. And then you’re gonna get in there with a little bit of tomato and lettuce but not too much cause it’s not a salad, it’s a taco, and then you’re gonna throw some avocado on top and some sour cream and then a bunch of cholula. I don’t know if you know what cholula hot sauce is but it’s the best. Throw a bunch of cholula on there, maybe squeeze some lime on top, and go to town.
• [Describing what he did and how he felt after winning an Oscar for Best Screenplay for Good Will Hunting] I remember going back home and I couldn’t sleep so I was just sitting there looking at the award and I remember thinking very clearly and said to myself thank God I didn’t fuck anyone over for this. I felt so blessed because I won it at such a young age. I couldn’t imagine how it would feel to chased it my entire career and not ever getting it.
• [How he felt after winning his first Oscar]I remember going back home and I couldn’t sleep so I was just sitting there looking at the award and I remember thinking very clearly and said to myself thank God I didn’t fuck anyone over for this.
• [on working with Robert De Niro in The Good Shepard] I learned a lot of things I didn’t know and I remembered a lot of things I’d forgotten and that “disappearing” into work for ten years and working constantly… you can get into some bad habits.
• (2012) I learned that I am afraid of heights. When I was doing Syriana, they arranged for my wife, Lucy, and me to go up to watch the sunset over the Arabian Peninsula from the top of that seven-star Dubai hotel that’s shaped like a sail, the Burj Al Arab. So we go to the very top-60 stories or something-we’re given champagne, and we go, “Oh my God, this is great.” But as I started to walk toward the edge, my legs locked up. I was absolutely frozen. I completely jumped my neocortex and went straight to this primal, full lizard-brain fear state. Lucy was walking all around the edge, while I was about to collapse from fear. She thought it was hysterical.
• (2012, on turning down roles) Having to say no to Avatar (2009) was tough because I particularly wanted to work with James Cameron, and still do, because he’s fantastic. He knew he was the star of that movie and that everyone was going to go see it anyway. When he said, “Look, I’m offering it to you, but if you say no, the movie doesn’t need you,” I remember thinking, Oh God, not only do I have to say no because of scheduling, but he’s going to make a star out of some guy who’s going to start taking jobs from me later… Milk (2008) was another hard one because I was excited it would have been for Gus Van Sant, and I would have had the chance to do scenes with Sean Penn. They pushed the schedule and it ran into the slot for Green Zone (2010). Steven Soderbergh’s mantra is “The movie gets the right person; the right actor gets the part,” but I was like, “Shit, no. That was my part.” But when I saw Milk (2008), Josh Brolin was so fucking good that I knew Soderbergh was right. Way back, Gus and I talked about my doing Brokeback Mountain (2005) with Joaquin Phoenix, but I had just done The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) and All the Pretty Horses (2000), so I said, “Gus, let’s do it in a couple of years. I just did a gay movie and a cowboy movie. I can’t do a gay cowboy movie now.” The right actor got the part. Heath Ledger was magnificent.
• (2012) One of the scariest things I’ve ever had to do was the underwater scene in the second Bourne movie, where the car goes into the river and I’ve lost the love of my life. I didn’t want to do that at all. So I wouldn’t be constantly aware of how scared I am of drowning, I had to go to a pool with this great stunt guy and dive master a couple of times a week for a month or so to train me to relax underwater without an oxygen mask and with a blindfold and, later, to do simple tasks underwater like tying a shoe… After we shot for one day, that night I woke up probably four times gasping for breath, thinking I was drowning. It was terrible. When you make movies, you end up being trained to do really weird things you don’t do anywhere else.
• (2012) When I turned 40 I had my whole family and some friends together. I realized I had to make a toast and hadn’t thought of anything to say. I stood up, and what came to me seemed incredibly true in the moment and even more so as time has gone by. I said, “I think I might actually be the luckiest guy on earth. I really might be him.” And nobody in the room reflexively said, “Bullshit,” because I am so lucky to have Lucy, my kids, my friends and this job. It’s been an unbelievable life. So I’m just looking for health and to stay in this groove as long as I can.
• Does [Sarah Palin] really believe that dinosaurs were here four thousand years ago? I need to know that. Because she’s going to have the nuclear codes.
• All you have in the end is to look back and like the choices you’ve made.
• [in defence of friend Ben Affleck, being criticized for agreeing to controversial casting].You know, he’s not playing King Lear. It’s Batman!
• I think the values that I have are consistent with the values I was raised with. I vote against my own self-interests constantly. I campaign against my own self-interests. If you’re born with a silver spoon in your mouth, you’re probably more likely to be the Koch brothers and think that you shouldn’t pay taxes on things. I think it’s just a question of where you come from.
• As disturbed as I am by a lot of the things that Obama has done and is doing, I would not have preferred a Romney presidency, that’s for sure. The alternative is even more frightening.
• I’m always cautious about overstepping any boundaries. At the end of the day, it’s a director’s medium, and if they don’t want to hear from me I just step back.
• Working with Steven [Soderbergh] is very different from working with anybody else. He takes the hocus-pocus out of making movies, and I like that.
• [on how he would react to a pandemic in real life] I have the benefit of knowing the virologist Ian Lipkin, our technical adviser [on _Contagion_]. He’s not the guy to talk to if you don’t want to get paranoid. He will freak you out. But I would follow his advice during an outbreak.
• [on what kind of political leadership he supports] Somebody who believes that building a strong, solid, educated middle class is ultimately the best thing for America. Someone like FDR. There’s a misconception that leaders lead. They don’t. They follow. Every great movement has come from the bottom up.
• I’m becoming far more interested in just functionality and making sure my body is as strong as it can be so I can swing my kids around and not worry about aches and pains.
• I’ve come to believe that the best way, if we really wanted to try to give out awards, would be to wait at least ten years.
• Usually the scripts I get have got Brad Pitt’s fingerprints on them, or Leonardo DiCaprio’s.
• I want to direct someday and I can’t really pass up the chance to work with the people I’m getting to work with. I’ve worked with Paul Greengrass three times now, and Clint Eastwood twice, and Steven Soderbergh five or six times, and the Coen Brothers this month. As long as that keeps happening, I can’t see myself taking time off, unless the work dried up.
• [on the possibility of a fourth Jason Bourne movie] I don’t know, you know. I think it will be a prequel of some kind with another actor and another director before we (himself and director Paul Greengrass) do another one. I think we are probably five years away from another one. We gotta get a script.
• [on the Oscars] They should give them out 10 years later, like the way they do the Hall of Fame in baseball. They do it in five years, but if you did 10 years later, if this year (2010), we were voting on what was the best picture of 2000, I think it would be much more honest. It’s like, when you pick up great old movies and you go, why the hell didn’t Brando win the Oscar for this one? Who won that year? Whatever the sizzle was about that year. 50 years later you’re looking at a movie and going, this is a historic cinematic performance.
• Ask anybody on the street which actors starred in the “Ocean’s” movies, and they’ll tell you it was George [Clooney] and Brad [Pitt]. I’m ‘support’ in “Ocean’s”. As I was in Saving Private Ryan (1998) – Tom [Hanks] carried that movie. You could accuse me of piggybacking on other people’s brilliance more than anything.
• [on 9/11] That day is seared into who I am more than I’d even like. It was weird because I stepped outside my apartment, looked up and saw it happening and then went back in and just watched CNN because I just wanted information. I remember everything about that day.
• [on the difference between Jason Bourne and James Bond] He’s not like Bond, who goes on individual missions. I mean, you could make Bond movies forever, because you’d start each film at the beginning of a new mission. But Bourne isn’t built that way, unfortunately.
• (On James Bond) He’s repulsive. Bond is an imperialist, misogynist, sociopath who goes around bedding women and swilling martinis and killing people. The movies have a formula, they stick to it, and it makes them a lot of money. They know what they are doing and they’re going to keep doing it.
• You do the actuary tables, there’s a one out of three chance, if not more, that McCain doesn’t survive his first term, and it’ll be President Palin. It’s like a really bad Disney movie, ‘The Hockey Mom.’ Oh, I’m just a hockey mom from Alaska, and she’s president. She’s facing down Vladimir Putin and using the folksy stuff she learned at the hockey rink. It’s absurd.
• (On his favorite roles) Good Will Hunting (1997) is so close to my heart because my best friend [Ben Affleck] and I invented him, he’s from Boston, and it was what we knew. The stakes were pretty high with “Good Will Hunting” and it worked out as best as it can in this business – people saw the movie, it got good reviews, I was happy with the finished product, and they gave us an Oscar. I am also pretty fond of “Tom Ripley” – playing smart and sinister is just so much fun. I wasn’t that fond of his choice of swim trunks, though, so a few points away for that. And “John Grady Cole” in All the Pretty Horses (2000) was good, too. The integrity of that character is admirable. Unfortunately, I am the only one who saw that movie, so no one will get that reference.
• (Talking about working with Robert De Niro in The Good Shepherd (2006)): I think I can say I’m a better actor after having worked with Robert De Niro.
• (On celebrity campaigns against such things as childhood poverty and disease) Look, I would much rather people were listening to politicians about this than actors. But the politicians aren’t talking about this, you know.
• You’ve given an aging suburban dad the ego-boost of a lifetime. (On being named People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive 2007)
• (On being seen as a ‘nice’ celebrity) I don’t hold myself to some higher standard of behavior. You don’t have to do a lot to be seen as nice. I guess some of these people must be such rampant pricks that people are amazed when you say hello. I don’t know why people like me, and I don’t know if I want to know. That might be the kiss of death. I’d rather people not know a lot about me and go see the movies.
• The Bond character will always be anchored in the 1960s and in the values of the 1960s. It’s so anachronistic when you put it in the world we live in today that Mike Myers made a fortune with his own spy franchise [Austin Powers] – it makes for great comedy. Bond is an imperialist and a misogynist who kills people and laughs about it, and drinks martinis and cracks jokes. Bourne is a serial monogamist whose girlfriend is dead and he does nothing but think about her. He doesn’t have the support of gadgets, and he feels guilty for what he’s done.
• Bond is part of the system. He’s an imperialist and a misogynist, and he laughs at killing people, and he sits there slugging martinis. It’ll never be the same thing as this, because Bourne is a guy who is against the establishment, who is paranoid and on the run. I just think fundamentally they’re just very different things.
• I’d had people say, “You’ll enjoy being famous for a week, and you’ll never enjoy it again”. But I don’t think I had that week. I may have been working and missed that moment.
• There are people who appear in the magazines and I don’t know who they are. I’ve never seen anything they’ve done and their careers are over already. They’re famous for maybe 10 minutes. Real careers, I think, take a long time to unfold.
• It’s just better to be yourself than to try to be some version of what you think the other person wants.
• What I want to do is a character-driven porn movie. It’s all going to be about characters, and the porn’s gonna grow all out of the character’s and it’s going to serve as character development.
• If anybody wanted to photograph my life, they’d get bored in a day. “Here’s Matt at home learning his lines. Here’s Matt researching in aisle six of his local library”. A few hours of that and they’d go home.
• [on The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)] If you have any ideas for a script, please, call Universal! We’ve gone so far from the book. [Robert Ludlum] wrote it as a trilogy and we’ve really kind of ignored that plot because it’s very Cold War. And so, in the updating process, we kind of threw out most of what he had so we’re kind of on our own to find a third one. “Bourne Ultimatum” is the third one and I feel like I’ve given ultimatums in both the first two!
• [on The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)] We’re all signed on in principle, in the sense that we’ve all agreed that we want to do it, but we’re not going to do it unless we have a great script. It’s ours to lose at the minute and, if we do make a third one, we want to make it as good as the first two. And if we can’t do that, then we’re going to have to let it drop.
• I’d love to be a dad. I hope I’d be great at it. That’s every man’s fear, yet his most important job.
• Now I feel I have an unspoken deal with the paparazzi: “I won’t do anything publicly interesting if you agree not to follow me.”
• I’m not being a monk. I live my life in New York. I have a girlfriend [Luciana Barroso]. But it’s not cost-effective for paparazzi to follow us. They can get one picture of us walking down the street.
• I found myself getting more publicly shy when the gala events and big crowds started. Some people embrace it. To me, it’s not worth enough to risk my private life being public.
• If your movies don’t perform, they just stop calling you.
• Some people get into this business and they’re so afraid to lose anything. They try to protect their position like clinging to a beachhead. These actors end up making really safe choices. I never wanted to go that route. If I go down, I’m going down swinging. I know that’s the way Heath Ledger feels and Ben Affleck feels the same way, too. We want to take the big swings.

Matt Damon Important Facts

• $15,000,000 to $25,000,000
• $20,000,000
• $10,000,000
• $10,000,000
• $5,000,000
• $5,500,000
• $7,000,000
• $5,000,000
• $600,000
• $20,000
• Has stated since The Bourne Identity, when rehearsing fight scenes with stunt men, he has bought each of them a bottle of champagne for every time he struck them by accident.
• He said that in 1995, he was paid $20,000 to be in Tommy Lee Jones film The Good Old Boys (1995). That money kept Damon and Ben Affleck free from having to take other jobs so that they could write Good Will Hunting (1997).
• Has starred in six films with Casey Affleck: Good Will Hunting (1997), Gerry (2002), Oceans Eleven (2002), Oceans Twelve (2004), Oceans Thirteen (2007) and Interstellar (2014). Interstellar (2014) is the only one in which They do not have any scenes together.
• He starred in two science fiction films with Jessica Chastain where his character needs to be rescued: Interstellar (2014) and The Martian (2015).
• He has starred in three different films where rescuing his character is a major plot point: Saving Private Ryan (1998), Interstellar (2014) and The Martian (2015).
• He has worked with 9 directors who have won a Best Director Oscar: Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, Anthony Minghella, Robert Redford, Steven Soderbergh, Martin Scorsese, Clint Eastwood, and Joel Coen & Ethan Coen.
• Jimmy Kimmel had a long running gag of ending his late night show with an apology to Matt Damon for not being able to interview him.
• He has appeared in four films directed by Kevin Smith: Chasing Amy (1997), Dogma (1999), Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001)_ and Jersey Girl (2004).
• Tenth cousin once removed of Ben Affleck.They are both descendants of William Knowlton Jr., a bricklayer who came to the United States from England in the 1630s.
• Exactly one year younger than Jeremy Davies, both appeared in Saving Private Ryan (1998) as Private Ryan and Corporal Upham. Both born on 8 October.
• Stated that his appearance on The Graham Norton Show (2007) with Hugh Bonneville and Bill Murray was ‘the best time he’d ever had on a chat show’.
• As of 2016, has appeared in five films that were nominated for the Best Picture Oscar (not counting his unconfirmed bit part in Field of Dreams (1989)): Good Will Hunting (1997), Saving Private Ryan (1998), The Departed (2006) , True Grit (2010) and The Martian (2015). The Departed (2006) won in the category.
• Is sometimes (but rarely) mistaken for actor Mark Wahlberg.
• Currently shooting director Martin Scorsese’s The Departed (2006) with Leonardo DiCaprio and Jack Nicholson in New York City and Boston. [August 2005]
• Filming The Informant! (2009) in Decatur, Illinois (Home to ADM). Various locations. [May 2008]
• New York City, USA: The documentary film which he narrated, American Teacher (2011), premiered here before opening around the country. [September 2011]
• Attended The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) premiere in Amsterdam, Netherlands on Aug. 23rd. [August 2007]
• Became a father for the 3rd time at age 40 when his wife Luciana Barroso gave birth to their daughter Stella Zavala Damon on October 20, 2010.
• Became a father for the 2nd time at age 37 when his wife Luciana Barroso gave birth to their daughter Gia Zavala Damon on August 20, 2008.
• Became a father for the 1st time at age 35 when his wife Luciana Barroso gave birth to their daughter Isabella Zavala Damon on June 11, 2006.
• Put his Miami Beach mansion on North Bay Rd on the market for $20 million in May 2013.
• When he and best friend Ben Affleck were struggling actors, they both shared a Boston bank account.
• Was, along with Jake Gyllenhaal, the studio’s first choice for the role of Jake Sully in Avatar (2009), but director James Cameron chose the (back then) more unknown Sam Worthington in the lead role instead.
• Appeared twice on the cover of GQ magazine: December ’99 and August ’07.
• Was at some point in talks to star in a remake of Blue Thunder (1983) with John Milius directing.
• Participated in the Cape Argus Cycle Tour in Cape Town, South Africa. [March 2009]
• Originally cast as Dan White in Milk (2008), but had to back out due to scheduling conflicts with Green Zone (2010).
• Visited Haiti with Wyclef Jean to deliver food to hurricane victims. [September 2008]
• Has an older brother named Kyle, who is a sculptor.
• He and Ben Affleck lived two blocks away from each other in Cambridge, Massachusetts, when they were children.
• He gained over 30 pounds to play Mark Whiteacre in The Informant! (2009), which he dieted off as soon as the shoot was complete.
• Named “Sexiest Man Alive” by People magazine in 2007.
• Named Hollywood’s “best value” by Forbes Magazine, with his films making $29 (US) for each dollar he is paid (2007).
• Is only 11 years older than Eddie Redmayne who plays his son in The Good Shepherd (2006).
• Received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (26 July 2007).
• Both he and best friend, Ben Affleck, spent Father’s Day 2007 with their wives and children together on vacation in Hawaii.
• Appears in two of the six summer 2007 “threequels”: Ocean’s Thirteen (2007) and The Bourne Ultimatum (2007). He also appeared in the second; movies of the “Bourne” and “Ocean” franchises in the same year (2004).
• Turned down the role of Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight (2008).
• Francis Ford Coppola cast him in The Rainmaker (1997) after seeing him in Courage Under Fire (1996).
• Turned down the part of Bobby Mercer in Four Brothers (2005), as he found the script to be “ultra-violent”. The part eventually went to Mark Wahlberg.
• Has English and Scottish ancestry on his father’s side, and Finnish and Swedish ancestry on his mother’s side. His maternal grandfather had changed his surname from “Pajari” (a Finnish surname) to “Paige”.
• Was once offered the chance at playing Daredevil when it was in production at Miramax in 1999. This version would have starred Damon and been written by Kevin Smith and directed by Robert Rodriguez. However, Marvel Comics wanted too large a budget for the filmmakers’ tastes.
• Met his wife, Luciana Barroso, in Florida, while he was filming Stuck on You (2003) and she was working as a bartender.
• Became stepfather to girlfriend Luciana Barroso’s daughter, Alexia, when he married Luciana at City Hall in New York City (December 9, 2005).
• Had never made a sequel until he made Ocean’s Twelve (2004) and The Bourne Supremacy (2004), both in the same year. In 2007, the third parts of those series, Ocean’s Thirteen (2007) and The Bourne Ultimatum (2007), opened, making the first trilogies he’s starred in.
• After a notable weight gain for Stuck on You (2003), he lost 22 pounds training for The Bourne Supremacy (2004), eventually having six-pack abs.
• One of his first movie roles was a one-line part in Mystic Pizza (1988) starring Julia Roberts. Later, he starred with Roberts in Ocean’s Eleven (2001).
• Was considered for the role of Matt Murdock/Daredevil in Daredevil (2003). The role eventually went to his best friend Ben Affleck.
• Learned to play piano for the film The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999).
• Lost 30 pounds for his role in the film The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999).
• 1998: Formed Pearl Street Productions with Ben Affleck and Chris Moore.
• Grew up next door to radical historian Howard Zinn. Damon references Zinn’s seminal work “A People’s History of the United States” as Will in Good Will Hunting (1997).
• Quit smoking after visiting a hypnotist in L.A.
• His uncle, George Brunstad, swam the English Channel at the age of 70. He completed the 21-mile swim in 15 hours and 59 minutes, making him the new world record holder as the oldest person to complete the swim. In the process, he raised $12,000 for a Haitian children’s group (29 August 2004).
• While promoting The Bourne Supremacy (2004) on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (1992), he revealed that when he was a college freshman his agent from a “ma and pa agency” inadvertently sent him and Ben Affleck to an audition for The New Mickey Mouse Club (1977). They were under the impression that they were going to meet the head of Touchstone Pictures.
• Has starred in 10 movies where the title contains some part of his character’s name in that movie: Good Will Hunting (1997), Saving Private Ryan (1998), The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Gerry (2002), Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002), The Bourne Identity (2002), and The Bourne Supremacy (2004), The Brothers Grimm (2005), The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) and Jason Bourne (2016).
• Is the real-life best friend of Ben Affleck. Each has starred together or had cameos in each of the other’s films.
• Had a cameo as a waiter in the film The Sum of All Fears (2002), but it was cut from the final film.
• Started a bowling league in Berlin while making The Bourne Supremacy (2004).
• Shaved his head for the movie The Brothers Grimm (2005) (to assist in the wearing of a wig for that role). The shaved head was shown in the movie EuroTrip (2004), which was filmed in Prague at the same time.
• Was named as one of E!’s “25 Most Eligible Bachelors” in June, 2002.
• When his baby nephew cries, he sings “Afternoon Delight” for him.
• Turned down the lead role in The Majestic (2001).
• Turned down a role in The Quick and the Dead (1995). Leonardo DiCaprio was cast instead.
• Both he and Ben Affleck worked as extras on the film Field of Dreams (1989). At one point during the shoot, Matt took some blades of grass from the field as mementos for his father.
• Audtioned for a part in Primal Fear (1996) that was eventually played by Edward Norton. He and Norton starred together two years later in Rounders (1998).
• Auditioned for a role in To Die For (1995) which was eventually given to Joaquin Phoenix.
• To perfect his Southern accent for his role as Rudy Baylor in The Rainmaker (1997), he tended bar in Knoxville, TN, for free. Later he hired one of the customers to serve as his dialect coach.
• Dropped out of Harvard 12 credits short of graduating to pursue his acting career.
• His parents divorced when he was two and he spent part of his childhood in a commune in Boston with his mother.
• Dropped 47 pounds for his role as a Gulf War vet in Courage Under Fire (1996).
• Chosen as one of “the 50 Most beautiful people in the world” by People magazine (1998).
• 1998: Played in $10,000 buy-in Texas Hold ‘Em tournament at the World Series of Poker (www.wsop.com) in Las Vegas. He was knocked out in the first day by poker legend Doyle Brunson. Damon had kings, Brunson aces.

Matt Damon Filmography

Matt Damon Awards