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Fri 11 April 2025 18:45, UK
He wasn’t a complete unknown before Good Will Hunting, but neither was Matt Damon particularly well-known as an actor. He was a guy who’d been in some things that people had seen, albeit always in a supporting role opposite much more illustrious co-stars.
His early roles included Mystic Pizza with Julia Roberts, Geronimo: An American Legend with Gene Hackman and Robert Duvall, and Courage Under Fire with Denzel Washington and Meg Ryan. His performance in the latter gained him plenty of attention, but it wasn’t quite a career-changer.
The title role in the film he scripted alongside best friend Ben Affleck definitely was, though, getting Damon on the shortlist for ‘Best Actor’ at the Academy Awards, with the Bostonian besties becoming stars overnight when they won ‘Best Adapted Screenplay’, which ironically irritated Steven Spielberg because he’d cast Damon in Saving Private Ryan because he wasn’t a household name.
Damon’s first major leading role came under the direction of Francis Ford Coppola in the John Grisham adaptation The Rainmaker, which was released before Good Will Hunting and Saving Private Ryan. Despite strong reviews, though, it wasn’t a hit, nor was it the star-maker the actor hoped it would be.
There was one part he was confident would have that effect on whoever was lucky enough to get it, a feeling that was proven entirely correct. “You’d go in and fight each other,” Damon recalled to Jetset of his struggles auditioning with countless other actors. “And if you got hold of a role, you’d have to make enough of an impression to get another job.”
One such role was Aaron Sampler in Gregory Hoblit’s 1996 legal thriller Primal Fear, which was up for grabs after Leonardo DiCaprio had passed on an offer. Damon “knew it was an instant career-changer for whoever got it,” and it wasn’t him. Instead, Edward Norton was hired to spar opposite Richard Gere in a mystery with a gut-punching final twist, and his instincts were right on the money.
Norton won the Golden Globe for ‘Best Supporting Actor’ for his feature debut and was nominated for an Oscar in the same category. Primal Fear launched him from obscurity to prominence overnight and set the foundation for everything that followed. Damon knew it was a role that had the potential to work wonders for the person who played it, and he was crushed when he didn’t get the nod.
On the plus side, he took to the stage just one year after Norton walked away empty-handed to claim his own Oscar, so it worked out alright in the end. Courage Under Fire, Good Will Hunting, and Saving Private Ryan were the three pictures that made Damon, even if he could have done it in one had he secured Norton’s breakthrough part in Primal Fear.
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