Matthew Paige "Matt" Damon was born on October 8, 1970, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His father, Kent, was a stockbroker, realtor and tax preparer. His mother, Nancy, was an early childhood education professor at Lesley University. Matt has one brother, Kyle, who is three years his senior. His parents divorced when Matt was two.

At 10, he met a guy from two blocks down the road: Ben Affleck. The pair did everything together. They played baseball (both are die-hard Boston Red Sox fans) and the fantasy role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons. They attended trashy movie double-features, and they both attended the pricey Rindge & Latin prep school. And it was here that Matt really took to acting.

Damon studied English at Harvard but left early to pursue a career in acting. He went on to gain starring roles in the films The Rainmaker (1997), and Good Will Hunting (1997), for which he shared an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay with fellow co-star Ben Affleck.

Later films include Saving Private Ryan (1998), The Talented Mr Ripley (1999), The Bourne Identity (2002), and its sequels The Bourne Supremacy (2004) and The Bourne Ultimatum (2007). The $125 million Bourne Ultimatum had the largest August opening weekend in movie history, doing estimated $70.2 million of business in the United States and Canada.

Damon married longtime girlfriend, Argentine-born Luciana Bozán Barroso, in December 2005 in New York City Hall. They had met while he was filming Stuck On You in Miami, where she was working as a bartender.

The couple has two daughters: Isabella, was born June 11, 2006, in Miami, where they live when he's not filming on location. Their second child, Gia Zavala Damon, was born August 20, 2008. He also has a stepdaughter, Alexa, from Barroso's prior marriage.

In 2007, Damon was named the "sexiest man alive" by People magazine. A surprised Damon said "all the campaigning" by pals George Clooney and Brad Pitt, who had each won the honor twice, had finally paid off