Matt Damon

Damon was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on October 8, 1970, the second son of Kent Telfer Damon (1942–2017), a stockbroker, and Nancy Carlsson-Paige (b. 1946), an early childhood education professor at Lesley University. His father had English and Scottish ancestry, while his mother is of Finnish and Swedish descent; her family surname had been changed from Pajari to Paige. Damon and his family moved to Newton for two years. His parents divorced when he was two years old, and he and his brother returned with their mother to Cambridge, where they lived in a six-family communal house. His brother, Kyle, is a sculptor and artist. Damon has said that, as a teenager, he had felt lonely, as if he did not belong, and that his mother's by-the-book approach to child-rearing had made it hard for him to define his own identity.

Damon attended Cambridge Alternative School and Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, and was a good student. He acted in several high-school theater productions, and has credited his drama teacher, Gerry Speca, as having had an important artistic influence on him, although noting wryly that Speca had given Ben Affleck (Damon's close friend and schoolmate) the "biggest roles and longest speeches". He attended Harvard University as a member of the class of 1992, residing in Lowell House, but left before receiving his degree to take a lead role in the film Geronimo: An American Legend. While at Harvard, as an exercise for an English class, Damon wrote an essay in the form of a film treatment which was later developed into the screenplay Good Will Hunting (for which he received an Academy Award). At Harvard, Damon was a member of the Delphic Club, one of the university's elite Final Clubs. In 2013, he was awarded the Harvard Arts Medal.