News culture This film forever changed Matt Damon’s career: it’s neither Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer nor Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan

Culture news This film forever changed Matt Damon’s career: it’s neither Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer nor Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan

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Matt Damon played with the greatest

Each generation has its favorite actors, and it must be admitted that Matt Damon is certainly one of our most popular actors. It must be said that he has played in particularly notable films created by talented directors, and that he is often accompanied by other remarkable actors and actresses. Recently, for example, he stood out in Oppenheimerthe film directed by Christopher Nolan starring Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Robert Downey Jr, Florence Pugh and Rami Malek, to name a few. It is also this film which won the most Oscars recently since it left with no less than 7 statuettes.

But Matt Damon’s career is not limited to this 2023 film, far from it. We could indeed see it in We have to save the soldier Ryan (by Steven Spielberg), The Legend of Bagger Vance (with Will Smith), Ocean’s Eleven (with George Clooney), Infiltrators (by Martin Scorsese), Invictus (by Clint Eastwood), Interstellar (with Matthew McConaughey) or even Alone on Mars (by Ridley Scott), among others. However, despite this absolutely impressive track record, Matt Damon has never won an Oscar for best actor. He was indeed nominated in this category for Will Hunting, Invictus and Alone on Mars, but he never left with the precious statuette… at least as an actor.

This film changed his career forever

Did you know that Matt Damon really launched his career as a screenwriter? While fans of the American actor may know this, it’s not really information that everyone knows. However, it is thanks to his writing that he managed to break into Hollywood. And even more surprising, the script that helped him get noticed by the general public was also written by another now famous actor: Ben Affleck. Indeed, when the two men were still only 27 and 25 respectively and not at all known in Hollywood, they teamed up to write a film that would change their lives forever: Will Hunting.

Released in 1997, Will Hunting is a drama film directed by Gus Van Sant and written by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, who also play roles in the feature film. The much missed Robin Williams was also entitled to a secondary role in the film, mainly playing opposite Matt Damon. Already at that moment, the American actor had the flair to know how to surround himself well since the rest of the cast was made up of Minnie Driver and Stellan Skarsgård. As a reminder, the film tells the story of Will Hunting, a gifted young man who is the victim of abuse at the hands of his parents. He then lived alone in a rundown house in Boston, but spent his time learning everything he could by reading lots of books. Impulsive and arrogant, he never really managed to stand out at school or in his professional life, until finally being noticed by a mathematics professor at MIT where he works as a janitor. Following an altercation with a police officer, Will is sentenced to prison but the professor manages to get him out on the condition that he works for him and is followed by a psychologist.

If you haven’t seen this film yet, know that it is quite simply the highest rated of Matt Damon’s entire career on Rotten Tomatoes, and is currently available on Netflix. In 1998, Will Hunting was nominated in no less than 9 different categories at the Oscars, including that of best original screenplay which Ben Affleck and Matt Damon both won, thus propelling them to the top from the start of their career in Hollywood. It was also thanks to this film that Robin Williams won his one and only Oscar.