Matthew Paige Damon (born October 8, 1970) is an American film actor and screenwriter.

Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts the son of an investment banker and realtor, Kent Damon, and an early-childhood education professor, Nancy Carlsson-Paige, who are mostly of British, Finnish and German ancestry. He attended Cambridge Rindge and Latin, the only public High School in Cambridge, MA where he helped the school win many state drama festivals. Damon's first film job was one line in the romantic comedy Mystic Pizza (1988). He went on to attend Harvard University, but dropped out a few credits shy of graduating to pursue his acting career, a move that brought him to Los Angeles. He, Ben Affleck, Rory Cochrane, and Matthew McConaughey are good friends.

Damon appeared in small roles in a few movies before landing a big part in Geronimo with Gene Hackman and Jason Patric. He next appeared as a heroin-addicted soldier in 1996's Courage Under Fire. The war film was an opportunity for Damon to show his dedication by undergoing an extensive weight loss to help portray his character, which almost proved a fatal move that put Damon on doctor's orders.

Damon and Affleck developed a thriller about a young math genius, which they pitched around Hollywood. Receiving advice from writer/director/actor Rob Reiner and screenwriter William Goldman, the two changed the script around to focus on a young math genius trying to make his way in the world. This eventually became Good Will Hunting, which earned both Damon and Affleck Oscars for Best Original Screenplay. Damon was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for the same film (which netted an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for co-star Robin Williams). Much of the credit for getting the film made goes to both executive producer Kevin Smith and Harvey Weinstein, Miramax Films chairman, to whom Smith gave the screenplay.

Damon also founded Project Greenlight with Affleck to find and fund worthwhile film projects from novice filmmakers.

Though sometimes seen as typecast in "pretty boy" parts aimed at the teenage market, Damon has been known to stray from the mainstream in his choice of roles, such as his portrayal of the coldblooded, by money obsessed Tom Ripley in The Talented Mr. Ripley and a fallen angel who waxes pop culture as intellectual subject matter in Dogma, in which he costarred with Affleck (1999). Damon also played amnesiac assassin Jason Bourne in the successful action movies The Bourne Identity and The Bourne Supremacy, with another Bourne sequel expected in 2007.

Damon married his bartender girlfriend, Luciana Barroso, in a private civil ceremony on December 9, 2005 in New York City. They had been dating since April 2004. He and his bride exchanged wedding vows during a small ceremony. Some media outlets have reported Luciana is pregnant with the couple's first child and that they are expecting in the middle of 2006; however, Damon's publicist has denied the reports.