Tragic Details About Matt Damon's Life You Never Knew

Over the past few decades, Matt Damon has established himself as one of Hollywood's most bankable leading men. With starring roles in hits like "The Talented Mr. Ripley," "The Martian," and the "Jason Bourne" franchise, Damon has proved that he has what it takes to be up there with the great legends of cinema. Though it may seem like he has it all, Damon's journey to the top wasn't paved with gold, and he continues to face his struggles to this day. Sometimes, fame is trickier to handle than the bright lights and glamour would have you believe. 

Damon's red carpet smiles hide the scars of several tragedies he's had to face throughout his life in the public eye. From a very public breakup to losing a friend unexpectedly, as well as dealing with several headline-making indiscretions, this is one actor who knows that getting what you want in Hollywood often comes at a cost that can impact your future moving forward, begging the question: Are the paychecks really worth it? 

It can be easy to forget that at their core, famous people are still just that — people. As we take a look back at some of the hardest challenges Damon has overcome, take a minute to appreciate the man behind the mask. After all, the best actors are the ones who can convince you everything is just fine when only the opposite is true.

Having your parents divorce when you're a child isn't exactly on everyone's to-do list. Though it might turn out to be for the best in the end, it's often very difficult to come to terms with — no matter how common it is. Matt Damon's parents, Kent Damon and Nancy Carlsson-Paige, went their separate ways in 1973 when Damon was still a toddler. At the time, the family split apart, and he moved with his mom and his brother to Cambridge, Massachusetts. While divorce is never a great option, Damon was lucky enough to make the most out of a bad situation, choosing not to let the situation negatively impact him further down the line.

In a 2012 profile for The Guardian, he explained, "My parents divorced when I was young, but I was brought up in two really loving households. I didn't have a contentious relationship with my mom or dad. I am not quite sure why, but I never felt the need to lie to them. I never hid anything."

Despite having to navigate between two separate households, Damon managed to pull through it and maintain a good relationship with his parents when it could have turned out very differently. They were both his guests at the 1998 Oscars where they saw him win the best original screenplay Oscar for "Good Will Hunting." 

There are some stars out there who became famous almost overnight. Take the stunning transformation of Josh Hartnett, for example. However, for Matt Damon, it wasn't quite so easy. In his early days of striving for stardom, Damon was so broke that even finding anywhere to live was a serious struggle. At one point, he explained during an appearance at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival (via The Sun), Ben Affleck was crashing on a couch in his tiny Los Angeles apartment after a failed engagement. When it was time to find a new place, their financial position was a little dubious, to say the least. 

"We were so broke, we had no credit score, we had nothing. So people were like, 'We can't rent to you,'" Damon explained. Interestingly, what the dynamic duo did have was a copy of Variety that contained an article announcing the sale of their screenplay for "Good Will Hunting." They showed it proudly to potential landlords as a way of saying they were good for the rent. Eventually, one landlord believed them. They managed to land an apartment, but it was no easy task. 

It's hard to imagine multimillionaire Damon in that position now, but at one point, it seemed to Damon that the hard times would never end. He was 27 when his big break finally came.

Before he made it big with "Good Will Hunting," Matt Damon was a regular working actor in Tinseltown just like the other up-and-comers of his era. Because he was so desperate to succeed, he took his roles very seriously — so seriously that he put his health at risk. In a Reddit AMA a few years back, Damon was asked what his most challenging role was. In a lengthy reply, he admitted that 1996's "Courage Under Fire, " in which he starred alongside Denzel Washington and Meg Ryan, almost broke him. As a lower-profile name in Hollywood at the time, Damon didn't have the bonus of a nutritionist to guide him, and he transformed his body on his own volition, plummeting from 190 pounds to 139 pounds. 

"[T]hat is not a natural weight for me and not a happy weight for me even when I was 25," the actor explained. "I had to run about 13 miles a day which wasn't even the hard part. The hard part was the diet, all I ate was chicken breast." Damon finished off by saying that he just made it up as he went along and that it was "incredibly challenging." 

Any expert will tell you that losing a massive amount of weight (especially within a short period of time) has to be done sensibly for the sake of one's health ... but for this then-young actor, it was worth the risk. 

Even if you work hard to achieve fame, it's not uncommon for stars to struggle with the drastic life changes that come along with it. As we previously mentioned, Matt Damon was 27 years old when his career started to take off after he won an Oscar for "Good Will Hunting." Though Damon didn't go through it alone thanks to his pal Ben Affleck, he has admitted that the transition to becoming a global star wasn't an easy one. In 2023, he told People that when he started getting recognition, he struggled with it initially. 

"I think the shock of becoming famous is so ... I mean, that messed me up for a couple [of] years," he explained, going on to say that the whole world treats you differently when you achieve that level of fame. "It's like, 'Oh, my whole experience has been altered in this really overwhelming way.'" In the same interview, Damon praised Affleck for being the one he could check in with since their journey started and also shared that having the same shared experience was a great source of comfort. 

Even so, Damon might be the first to admit that this is a case of "be careful what you wish for." Multiple stars will tell you just how tricky a beast fame can be!

There are many celebrity couples we remember fondly, but looking back at Matt Damon's '90s romance with Minnie Driver is especially rose-tinted. These two powerhouses met while working on "Good Will Hunting" when they were both still young and fresh in the industry. It may have seemed to fans that these two lovebirds had what it took to make it, but like many star-on-star romances of the era, it went down in flames — and caused quite the media storm at the same time. 

Damon appeared on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" in 1998 to promote "Good Will Hunting" and famously declared himself single, catching Driver unawares. Just a month earlier, Damon had professed his adoration for his co-star, telling David Letterman that Driver "pretty much rocked my world" (via Hello!) The actress recounted the breakup during a chat with Entertainment Tonight in 2022, explaining just how tricky it was to navigate because it was so public and plastered all over the covers of magazines: "I don't care who you are, that is agony and it's like a strange, surreal dream."

Ben Affleck has been influencing Matt Damon's acting far longer than we knew, but he hasn't always been there to stop his bestie from making poor financial decisions. At the end of the day, actors may have some idea of which projects will be successful, but no one really knows for sure. One of Damon's biggest mistakes was choosing not to take the lead role in James Cameron's fantasy adventure movie "Avatar." As cinemagoers may remember, it went to Australian actor Sam Worthington instead. 

While Worthington did a great job as paraplegic marine Jake Sully, Cameron was desperate to get Damon on board with the project — so much so that he offered him 10% of the movie's box office takings, according to Damon, who spoke at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival (via The Sun.)  "I was offered a little movie called Avatar," explained the A-lister. "I will go down in history. You will never meet an actor who turned down more money than me."

Damon also brought it up in a 2023 interview with Entertainment Tonight, in which he admitted, "It's the dumbest thing an actor ever did in the history of acting. ... I've probably done, like, 50 movies. I've never been in a movie that made $1 billion." Damon may have a complex relationship with fame, but it seems like this is one blockbuster he regrets not doing. 

There's no denying that the cast of "Good Will Hunting" went on to do incredible things, but there was one among them who shined a little brighter than the rest: the formidable Robin Williams. By the time Williams starred in the movie, he was already a much-loved and well-established actor with hits like "Mrs. Doubtfire" and "Aladdin" under his belt. Undoubtedly, having a name as big as his attached to one of their early projects meant a great deal to Matt Damon and Ben Affleck — and Williams also scored an Oscar for the project. 

During an interview with Katie Couric for Yahoo Global News, Damon admitted, "Ben and I owe everything to him. He said yes to our movie and he got it made. I could never thank him enough." Williams' life was tragically cut short when he died by suicide in 2014, rocking the entertainment community to the core and devastating fans across the globe. As is often the case in situations like this, it led Damon to regret not having kept in touch with his former co-star. 

He told Couric, "I think everyone who wasn't there with him at the end feels bad that they didn't see it coming," saying that he wanted to become a more communicative friend to others and prevent these situations from occurring. 

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The stunning transformation of Matt Damon has seen him go from a young Hollywood upstart to a bona fide leading man. That said, even Damon isn't blessed with the Midas touch, and throughout the late 2010s, it looked like he couldn't catch a break. Movies like "Downsizing," "Suburbicon," and "The Great Wall" were all critical flops, and Damon didn't always feel great while shooting them, either. 

Though the actor didn't pinpoint a specific movie, he revealed in an interview with YouTube show "Jake's Takes" that he began to struggle at one point. "Without naming any particular movies, sometimes you find yourself in a movie that you know, perhaps, might not be what you had hoped it would be, and you're still making it," Damon explained. "And I remember halfway through production and you've still got months to go and you've taken your family somewhere, you know, and you've inconvenienced them, and I remember my wife pulling me up because I fell into a depression about, like, 'What have I done?'"

Damon admitted that it was a tricky experience, but he managed to pull himself up by his bootstraps and give the project's grueling 15-hour days his best shot despite not having much faith in the final product itself — largely thanks to his wife, Luciana Barroso. 

Matt Damon brought his supportive and loving father, Kent Damon, to many red carpet events over the years. Kent always looked thrilled to be supporting his son (as pictured above). Even Matt Damon and Ben Affleck's friendship was made better by Affleck loving his pal's parents, and the Batman actor was allegedly just as devastated as Damon when Kent died in 2017 following a cancer diagnosis. Kent's death was confirmed by Damon's rep to The Hollywood Reporter, and the publication pointed out that the actor didn't appear at the premiere of his movie "Downsizing" due to his father's illness. 

Before his father's death, Damon previously spoke to Extra and explained the situation was drawn out. "It's been a slow unfolding. My dad's sick, so that's a process we're going through," he said. "We'll take any prayers you got, so throw 'em up there." The loss of his dad continued to impact Damon when he appeared on "Saturday Night Live" a year later. 

During his opening monologue (via Daily Mail) Damon recalled a sweet story of watching the popular show with his dad as a kid, telling the audience, "Although it was way past our bedtime, my dad knew that there was nothing more important in the world than to laugh with the people that you love." There wasn't a dry eye in the house — including Damon.

For most of his career (public breakup with Minnie Driver notwithstanding) Matt Damon managed to keep himself out of trouble, gaining the rare reputation of unproblematic Hollywood icon. That was, until he landed himself in hot water in 2021 by admitting that he casually used a homophobic slur — and didn't stop until his daughter told him to. During an interview with The Sunday Times, the actor admitted that he used the homophobic F-word in a joke, but his daughter had to point out that it wasn't acceptable. "She went to her room and wrote a very long, beautiful treatise on how that word is dangerous. I said, 'I retire the F-slur!' I understood," he explained. 

Though it could be argued that Damon was talking about it publicly to call himself out and educate others, the entire debacle didn't go down well. The backlash was so loud that Damon released a statement clarifying that the word wasn't part of his everyday vocabulary. "I have never called anyone 'f*****' in my personal life, and this conversation with my daughter was not a personal awakening. I do not use slurs of any kind," he said in a statement to Variety.

Despite seemingly clearing up the confusion, other public figures like comedian Billy Eichner quickly called the actor out. Eichner posted on X (previously Twitter): "I want to know what word Matt Damon has replaced f***** with."

There may be signs that J.Lo and Ben Affleck are headed for a second split. Would Matt Damon be sad for his buddy, or secretly elated? According to various sources, Damon and Affleck's relationship has been strained over the years because of Affleck's relationship with the "Hustlers" star. According to OK!, the famous buddies had a falling out the first time Affleck and Jennifer Lopez dated back in the aughts, but then the relationship ultimately ended anyway. Rumors started to rise again when Affleck married his former love, with RadarOnline claiming that an inside source gave them the scoop: 

"It's no secret Matt can't stand Jennifer. He hates what she's done to the free-spirited buddy he used to know. Jennifer feels the need to micromanage Ben's life to an extreme degree, and now Ben's so badgered and browbeaten he doesn't have the strength to stand up for himself." The source went on to say that Damon even gave Affleck an ultimatum, telling his friend that he would hang out with him again after he got rid of Lopez.

Whether this is true or simply tabloid speculation remains to be seen, but it's not unusual for lifelong friends to have issues in situations like this one. The real question is: Can this friendship survive another 25 years in show business or will it have a shorter shelf life?