Matt Damon

Born: 8th October 1970
Where: Cambridge, Massachusetts

Although known primarily as one of Hollywood's big players as an actor it was as a screenwriter that he won an Academy Award.

Good Will Hunting, for which he was also nominated for a Best Actor Oscar, was co-scripted by Damon and childhood friend Ben Affleck.

As the product of a broken home who spent his childhood in a commune, Damon originally turned to acting as a form of escape.

After dropping out of Harvard University, he and Affleck supported each other until Damon landed his first role in Mystic Pizza - the movie that launched Julia Roberts.

He went on to land a more substantial role in the TV movie Rising Son, but it was School Ties in 1992, co-starring Affleck, where he gained valuable experience.

A role as a Gulf War vet-turned-heroin addict in Courage Under Fire got him noticed and then his future was sealed when he and Affleck started work on Good Will Hunting.

Subsequent roles showed shrewd judgement - Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan and Francis Ford Coppola's The Rainmaker.

Teaming up again with Affleck in 1999, he played one half of a pair of renegade angels in Kevin Smith's controversial Dogma.

That was followed by a Golden Globe for his part in the title role of The Talented Mr Ripley opposite Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow.

Aside from acting, he sponsored the internet screenwriting competition Project Greenlight through his company LivePlanet, a co-venture with Affleck.

In 2000, he portrayed a 1930s golfer in The Legend of Bagger Vance, directed by Robert Redford, and starred in the film version of All The Pretty Horses, scripted and directed by Billy Bob Thornton.

Damon starred with George Clooney and Brad Pitt in the sparkling remake of Ocean's Eleven and co-wrote and co-starred with Affleck in the weak Sundance-screened Gerry.

He played an amnesiac spy in The Bourne Identity and went on to provide a couple of cameos for Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and Jersey Girl.

Matt tested himself further by starring in an out and out comedy - the Farrelly Brothers' Stuck On You, in which Matt literally starred alongside Greg Kinnear as the pair played conjoined twins.

In 2004, he returned to the action scene with The Bourne Supremacy, which managed to improve on the high-class original, and reprised his role as Linus the pickpocket in the sequel Ocean's Twelve.

Recent work includes the role of Wilhelm Grimm opposite Heath Ledger's Jacob Grimm in Terry Gilliam's adaptation of the story of the fairytale brothers.