Matt Damon: The Man of Good Will

You have to love this guy. Damon is, of course, right about the year he's had. And it's not just him. He seems to hang with a magic circle of friends who are all having great years. These "friends" he refers to line up like a Who's Who of Young Hollywood. Ben Affleck, who starred with Damon in School Ties, did Dazed and Confused with then unknown Matthew McConaughey and Rory Cochrane (the crazy guy with a tattoo on his shaved head in Love and a .45), and those two are part of the posse. Affleck's younger brother Casey made To Die For with Joaquin Phoenix, and those two are in this tight group as well.

"We used to tool around in L.A. together," says Damon. "We always used to say, 'Hey, I read this script, maybe we can all do it.' We were all struggling. I remember when we heard Matthew got offered a million bucks for A Time to Kill. We were all just jumping around, screaming. I mean, the fact that one of us was 'the guy' was just too much to be believed."

Unlike much of the rest of young Hollywood, which would rather step on your head than ask you to move aside, Damon actually roots for the other guy. He must have just been brought up right. He was born in Boston, the son of a professor mother and realtor father who divorced when Damon was two. "My mom and my brother and I moved into a community house," he says, smiling at the memory. "Six families got together, bought a house and rebuilt it. Everyone had their own apartment, but the kids felt free to wander from apartment to apartment."

I moan. "Communal living is such a nightmare."

"This wasn't. Everyone had their space, and as a kid, it was heaven. If your mom was out or not in the mood for you, there was always another mother around who was."

"Were they hippies?" I ask, trying to imagine who the hell would want other people's kids popping in at all hours.

"Oh, yeah, definitely. They all had the same views on money, politics, raising children. My mom wrote a book about the way kids play with toys. Her theory was that kids' shows were half-hour commercials for products and that companies were starting to tell kids how they should play with toys. So in our house we only had blocks. My brother and I hated those fucking blocks. What the hell could you do with them? So my brother would make these really amazing costumes, which I'd wear, and we'd act out these stories."

"Is that when you decided you wanted to be an actor?"

Damon nods. "When Star Wars came out, we went nuts. We went to see it 25 times, couldn't get enough of it. It was this world of total imagination that was suddenly right there in front of us. I was always acting out these parts, and my brother, who went on to become an artist and a sculptor, was always designing these great costumes. It seems we were on predetermined paths from a very early time."

"So, you want to be an actor, but you go to Harvard to get a degree in English?"

"I know," Damon says. "It was just so exciting to get into Harvard. But I didn't do so well when I got there. I screwed up and got the gentleman's B minus, which is basically what they give you when you really should be flunking. They don't like to acknowledge that they admitted the wrong person. I was 17, just going out and having a good time, playing pool. After my first year, I did [the cable TV movie] Rising Son and then when I went back to school, I really dug it. Where else can you relax and study Japanese culture? I left again to do School Ties and Geronimo, and then I went back for a third year. Each year I kept doing better and better, because I realized how great it was to be in school, how it gave me a kind of freedom that I may never have again in my whole life. I have another year to do, but I can't seem to schedule it in."

"Are you and Ben going to write another script?"

"Yeah, we're starting one next month. Ben took a vacation with his girlfriend, though. They went to Saint Martin for a week, which is no small potatoes. All our families were saying, 'Ben's going to Saint Martin? Wow--I guess he really made it, huh?' We are not the kind of kids who imagined ourselves in Saint Martin, believe me."

"Speaking of girlfriends," I begin.

"Do we have to?" he implores, rolling his eyes.

"Of course," I tell him. "What's up with that picture of you and Minnie? Are you dating her?"

Damon turns red. "I am, but it's kind of new and I don't want to screw it up by talking about it." He stops cold. But then smiles and says, "She's so British." As if that explains everything.

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