Paige is his middle name.1)
On October 8, 1970, he was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts.2)
He is the second son of stockbroker Kent Telfer Damon and Nancy Carlsson-Paige, a Lesley University early childhood education professor.3)
His father is of English and Scottish origin, while his mother is five-eighths Finnish and three-eighths Swedish (his mother's family surname was altered from “Pajari” to “Paige”).4)
Damon and his family spent two years in Newton. Damon's parents split when he was two years old, and he and his brother moved to Cambridge with their mother, where they resided in a six-family common home.5)
Kyle, his brother, is now a well-known sculptor and artist.6)
He struggled to define his personal identity as a result of his mother's “by the book” approach to child-rearing.7)
He was a strong student at Cambridge Alternative School (now Graham and Parks) and later Cambridge Rindge and Latin School.8)
Damon appeared in various high school theatrical plays as an actor.9)
He praised his theatre instructor, Gerry Speca, as a key aesthetic influence, despite the fact that his good friend and schoolmate, Ben Affleck, got the “largest roles and longest monologues”.10)
Damon attended Harvard University, where he was a resident at Lowell House (Harvard College) and a member of the class of 1992, but left before graduating to play Geronimo: An American Legend.11)
As an experiment for an English class at Harvard, he composed an early treatment of the screenplay for Good Will Hunting. Damon belonged to the Delphic Club, one of the University's elite Final Clubs.12)
He received the Harvard Arts Medal in 2013.13)
Damon won an Academy Award in 1998 for his screenplay for Good Will Hunting, which was presented to him by Harvard alumni Jack Lemmon, who was also a member of Harvard's Delphic Club.14)
Damon began his acting career in high school theater plays before making his professional debut in the film Mystic Pizza (1988).15)