Matt Damon Trivia: 36 fascinating facts about the actor!

Matt Damon is an American actor, film producer, and screenwriter.

Let’s find out some interesting facts about him!

1. Matthew Paige “Matt” Damon was born October 8, 1970 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

2. He is the second son of Kent Telfer Damon, a stockbroker, and Nancy Carlsson-Paige, an early childhood education professor at Lesley University.

3. His father has English and Scottish ancestry, and his mother is of five-eighths Finnish and three-eighths Swedish descent (his mother’s family surname had been changed from the Finnish “Pajari” to “Paige”).

4. Damon and his family moved to Newton for two years. His parents divorced when he was two years old, and Damon and his brother returned with their mother to Cambridge,where they lived in a six-family communal house.

5. His brother Kyle is now an accomplished sculptor and artist.

6. As a lonely teenager, Damon has said that he felt that he did not belong.

7. Due to his mother’s “by the book” approach to child-rearing, he had a hard time defining a self identity.

8. He attended Cambridge Alternative School (now Graham and Parks) and then Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, where he was a good student.

9. Damon performed as an actor in several high school theater productions.

10. He credited his drama teacher, Gerry Speca, as an important artistic influence, though Ben Affleck, his good friend and schoolmate, got the “biggest roles and longest speeches”.

11. Damon attended Harvard University, where he was a resident of Lowell House (Harvard College) and a member of the class of 1992, but left before receiving his degree to take a lead role in the film Geronimo: An American Legend.

12. While at Harvard, he wrote an early treatment of the screenplay for Good Will Hunting as an exercise for an English class. Damon was a member of the Delphic Club, one of the University’s select Final Clubs.

13. In 2013, he was awarded the Harvard Arts Medal.

14. Damon received an Academy Award for the screenplay of Good Will Hunting in 1998, which was handed to him by Harvard alumnus Jack Lemmon, who had also been a member of Harvard’s Delphic Club.

15. Damon began his acting career by appearing in high school theater productions and he made his professional acting debut in the film Mystic Pizza (1988).

16. He came to prominence in 1997 when he wrote and starred in Good Will Hunting alongside Ben Affleck, which won them the Academy and Golden Globe awards for Best Screenplay, and earned Damon a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor.

17. He continued to garner praise from critics for his roles as the eponymous character in Saving Private Ryan (1998), the antihero in The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), a fallen angel in Dogma (1999), an energy analyst in Syriana (2005), and an Irish-American criminal in The Departed (2006).

18. Damon is also known for his starring roles as Jason Bourne in the Bourne franchise (2002–16) and as a con man in the Ocean’s Trilogy (2001–07).

19. For his supporting role as the rugby player Francois Pienaar in Invictus (2009) and his leading role as an astronaut stranded on Mars in The Martian (2015), Damon received Oscar nominations for Best Supporting Actor and Best Actor, respectively. The latter also won him a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor.

20. Damon has received Emmy Award nominations for his portrayal of Scott Thorson in the biopic Behind the Candelabra (2013) and for producing the reality series Project Greenlight.

21. In addition to acting in films, Damon has performed voice-over work in both animated and documentary films and has established two production companies with Affleck.

22. He has been actively involved in charitable work, including the ONE Campaign, H2O Africa Foundation, Feeding America, and Water.org.

23. He is ranked among Forbes magazine’s most bankable stars and is one of the highest-grossing actors of all time.

24. Damon has received various accolades, including an Academy Award from five nominations, two Golden Globe Awards from eight nominations, and has been nominated for two British Academy Film Awards and six Emmy Awards.

25. Damon dated his Good Will Hunting co-star Minnie Driver.

26. He later had a two-year relationship with actress Winona Ryder.

27. From 2001 to 2003, he dated Odessa Whitmire, the former personal assistant of Billy Bob Thornton and Ben Affleck.

28. Damon met Argentine Luciana Bozán Barroso in April 2003 while filming Stuck on You in Miami.

29. They became engaged in September 2005 and married in a private civil ceremony on December 9, 2005, at the Manhattan Marriage Bureau. The couple has three daughters: Isabella (b. 2006), Gia Zavala (b. 2008), and Stella Zavala (b. 2010).

30. He also has a stepdaughter, Alexia Barroso (b. 1998), from Luciana’s previous marriage.

31. Since 2012, they have lived in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, having previously lived in Miami and New York.

32. Damon is a fan of the Boston Red Sox.

33. After the team won the 2007 World Series, he narrated the commemorative DVD release of the event.

34. He has competed in several World Series of Poker (WSOP) events, including the 2010 World Series of Poker main event.

35. He was busted out of the 1998 WSOP by poker professional Doyle Brunson.

36. He has a friendly on-going feud with Jimmy Kimmel. Kimmel says the joke began after a particularly awful show with awful guests, so he decided to make light of the situation and act as if Damon had been bumped for said guests, which is just hilarious. Damon got his “revenge” earlier this year when he held Kimmel hostage and took over his show for a night.