A biography for Matt Damonhasn’t been written yet.
“As for poker, I've stayed away from that, even though when I was in Vegas for Ocean's Eleven, I would get accosted by these guys begging me to play. They just want to take my money. They see me, think 'actor' and see some easy money.”
“I didn't grow up with great privilege, nor did I grow up wanting for anything. I was a middle-class kid and, relative to the rest of the world, that's great wealth.”
“I'm always cautious about overstepping any boundaries. At the end of the day, it's a director's medium, and if they don't want to hear from me I just step back.”
“I'd had people say, 'You'll enjoy being famous for a week, and you'll never enjoy it again'. But I don't think I had that week. I may have been working and missed that moment.”
“Now that I have kids, I'm probably more overprotective than I've ever been. My wife's nickname for me is 'red alert.' I sometimes check just to see if the kids are breathing. But I try not to be a helicopter parent.”
“Right before 'The Bourne Identity' came out, I hadn't been offered a movie in a year.”
“As somebody who makes his living in the movie business and wants to contribute to it, I think that the best chance I have of doing that is just consistently working with great directors.”
“It's just better to be yourself than to try to be some version of what you think the other person wants.”
“My wife is my soul mate. I can't imagine being without her.”
“If your movies don't perform, they just stop calling you.”
“My mother is a professor of early childhood education. When I was two she would say she knew I was going to be an actor.”
“I think what makes a good actor's director is the same thing that makes a good director. Acting is just one of the trades necessary to make a movie.”
“I'm not Brad Pitt or George Clooney. Those guys walk into a room and the room changes. I think there's something more... not average, but everyman about me.”
“If you are writing a story and trying to draw an audience to come and hear you tell it, it's got to in some way relate to them. Who wants to come and hear about your specific problems? It's not therapy - it's supposed to be a communal piece of entertainment.”
“I'd love to be a dad. I hope I'd be great at it. That's every man's fear, yet his most important job.”
“There are people who appear in the magazines and I don't know who they are. I've never seen anything they've done and their careers are over already. They're famous for maybe 10 minutes. Real careers, I think, take a long time to unfold.”
“That's the way this business works: if your movies do well at the box office, you will be offered more movies. It doesn't matter if you're a nice guy or you're a prick. If your movies do well, there's a job waiting for you in Hollywood. It's not any more complicated than that.”
“I started 'The Rainmaker' in August 1996, and I've been working consistently ever since. It's not like I had some grand plan; I keep getting offered jobs so good I can't say no.”
“The only sci-fi movie that I've ever been offered that, had circumstances been different, I would have definitely done, was 'Avatar.' And I literally couldn't do it because of my schedule. But listening to James Cameron talk about 'Avatar' was so fascinating. Because he literally invented the world in his mind - and it literally existed.”
“I've been left alone, even by the paparazzi, because what sells is sex and scandal. Absent that, they really don't have much interest in you. I'm still married, still working, still happy.”