Matt Damon

An affable player who has cultivated friendships in tandem with his showbiz career, Damon began acting professionally while attending Harvard University. His first notable role was as an anti-Semitic student in the 1992 teen drama School Ties, costarring his childhood buddy and future collaborator Ben Affleck. After a handful of supporting parts, Damon and Affleck cowrote and costarred in the hit 1997 indie drama Good Will Hunting. Not only did Damon earn an Oscar nod for his winning portrayal of a quiet genius, the duo picked up an Oscar for best screenplay. As both actors' stars continued to rise, they made cameos in each other's projects and also produced the popular filmmaking reality series Project Greenlight. But Damon was generally viewed as the more talented of the two, delivering top-notch performances in diverse roles, such as a murderous imposter in The Talented Mr. Ripley, a suave thief in Ocean's Eleven and an amnesia-stricken spy in The Bourne Identity. Like Affleck, Damon had an eye for famous ladies (Winona Ryder, Minnie Driver) but he usually managed to keep out of the tabloids. In 2005 Damon married interior designer Luciana Barroso when she was a few months pregnant with their child, just as Affleck had done earlier in the year with Jennifer Garner.