Matt Damon's Oscar-winning screenplay began as a Harvard class assignment
For an English class at Harvard, Matt Damon wrote an essay shaped like a film treatment. He roped in his childhood friend Ben Affleck to act out scenes in front of the class. Years later that exercise became Good Will Hunting, which won the pair an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.
Damon grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the son of a stockbroker and a professor of early childhood education, and after his parents split he lived with his mother in a communal house shared by six families. He later admitted feeling lonely as a teenager, unsure where he belonged. At school he met Affleck, and he wryly recalled that their drama teacher always gave Affleck the longest speeches.
Acting pulled him away from his degree. His film debut, at 18, was a single line in Mystic Pizza. In 1992 he left Harvard a semester short of finishing, to star in Geronimo: An American Legend, wrongly expecting it to be a hit. For Courage Under Fire he shed 40 pounds in 100 days on a regime he devised himself, which won him notice from critics.
Meanwhile the Harvard treatment grew into a full screenplay about a young maths genius, shaped largely through improvisation sessions after Damon moved into Affleck's Los Angeles flat, with advice from figures including Rob Reiner and William Goldman. They sold it in 1994, fell out with the first buyer, and persuaded Miramax to take it on. Each writer was paid 600,000 dollars; the film took in more than 225 million worldwide and earned nine Oscar nominations, including Best Actor for Damon. He described the leap from obscurity to being stared at on New York streets as nearly indescribable, though he had by then been working in film for 11 years.
Stardom was uneven at first. Two romantic dramas from 2000 with him in the lead, one directed by Robert Redford, failed with critics and audiences, and he spent six months without work. Then came the heist ensemble Ocean's Eleven, which earned 450 million dollars against an 83 million budget, and The Bourne Identity, for which he trained for three months in stunts, boxing and the Filipino stick-fighting art eskrima. He later won a Golden Globe playing an astronaut stranded on Mars in The Martian.
Source: Matt Damon
