On Monday, Matt Damon will celebrate his 41st birthday. The Cambridge-born actor has come a long way since sobbing ON Robin Williams’ shoulder in Good Will Hunting, playing everything from a creepy identity thief to a South African rugby player to one of the best actions stars of the past 15 years.
In celebration of his 42nd birthday, we’ve narrowed down all of Damon’s performances to the 10 best.
7. Mark Whitacre in The Informant!
Damon teamed back up with Ocean’s director Steven Soderberg for 2009’s The Informant!. The film showed promise, but ended up developing too slowly for most people’s taste. Nevertheless, it saw Damon in one of his more adventurous roles, playing Mark Whitacre, a chubby, detail-obsessed food-processing employee who blows the whistle on his company’s price-fixing. Based on a true story, Whitacre suffers from bipolar disorder, which only complicates matters when the FBI hooks him up with a wire to gather more information in regard to his company’s indiscretions.
6. Jason Bourne in the Bourne Trilogy
With The Bourne Identity, Damon came out of nowhere and established himself as perhaps the most capable action star in Hollywood. We’re even pretty sure the cold, calculating Jason Bourne could have done a number on any incarnation of Bond, and Damon’s steely performance is the reason why.
5. Colin Sullivan in The Departed
2006’s The Departed was a perfect storm of excellence: Scorcese, Nicholson in his last great role, Alec Baldwin at his funniest, Mark Walhberg was Mark Wahlberg and Leo Dicaprio and Matt Damon absolutely killed as an illegitimate gangster and an illegitimate cop, respectively, who were unknowingly trying to out each other. We don’t often get to see Damon in such a villainous role as this.
4. Linus Caldwell in the Ocean’s Trilogy
Damon plays an alpha-badass in the Bourne Trilogy, but in the Ocean’s trilogy he’s a self-conscious master thief constantly seeking the approval of George Clooney’s and Brad Pitt’s characters, who serve as older brother figures to the often bumbling Damon. He’s also the group’s de facto role player, most notably as a Nevada Gaming Commission agent trying to calm down an irate Bernic Mac.
3. LeBoeuf in True Grit
The underrated True Grit was one of the most well-acted films of 2011, with signature performances from Jeff Bridges, a 14-year-old Hailee Steinfeld and Damon, who plays a Texas Ranger who becomes Bridges’ unlikely sidekick in their hunt to track down the man who killed Steinfeld’s father. Speaking with a thick Southern drawl, LeBoeuf is a self-assured fast talker who’s quick to scoff at Bridges drunkenness and questionable methods. LeBoeuf also loses his tongue along the way, a hindrance that Damon accounted for by wrapping a hair tie around his tongue as he acted.
2. Tom Ripley in The Talented Mr. Ripley
1999’s The Talented Mr. Ripley saw Damon in one of his most disturbing and cerebral roles, playing a con-artist who kills and assumes the identity Jude Law’s character of Dickie, whom Damon was hired to bring home from Italy. The Talented Mr. Ripley was the first role to show just how versatile Damon’s acting chops were. He combines jealousy, deception, fraudulence, rage and downright creepiness into one of his more stirring performances.
1. Will Hunting in Good Will Hunting
The role that launched Damon’s career was also his best, earning him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. Damon played a rough-around-the-edges orphan genius with a photographic memory, whose brilliance is discovered while working as a janitor at M.I.T. Simultaneously wrestling with the pressure to put his talents to good use and the need to open himself up emotionally to his girlfriend, Skylar (Minnie Driver), this is the most authentic of Damon’s performances. And who can forget…”How do you like THEM apples?!”
