Matt Damon on how birth order shaped his personality
Interviewed by Krista Smith for Netflix's Skip Intro Podcast (19 January 2026)
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SMITH: How has your birth order informed who you are as a person?
MATT: I've thought about this a lot because my wife is the oldest of three, and I'm the youngest of two. I really think that's one of the reasons we work so well. Because I think as the youngest [...] I'm extremely adaptable. I have no need to be in charge. [...] But I think Lucy and I gel together really well because she's five years younger than me, but she just naturally takes on that kind of leadership role. Then I'm completely fine with it.
We bought our house in L.A. years ago. We were living in New York, and we had talked about moving to L.A., and we were going out because I was going to shoot Behind The Candelabra in L.A., and so we needed to rent a house for the summer. And she went out to find the rental and saw a house for sale that was on the same street that Ben lived on, and called me and said, "There's this house, and I love it!" And Ben came down and looked at it. And so I had my two favorite people on the phone. And Ben was like, "You should get this place." And Lucy said, "I love this place." And I was just like, "OK." Like, we bought it, and I'd never seen the house. But I knew if they love it, I'm sure it's great. And if she loves it and she's going to be happy, I know I'm going to be happy. I know it's nicer than some of the hotels I've stayed in while I'm shooting. So this is going to be totally fine. And it was. And we lived there for nine years.
SMITH: That's amazing. And now they run your company, basically, right? Artists Equity?
MATT: Actually, yeah. We're the three partners in the company. And when I was shootingā Another thing that was unique about that Odyssey experience for my kids was that when I was shooting that, Ben was shooting this movie called Animals. [...] And Lucy produced it. And so she left to go to L.A. I left to go to Europe. And we had to have somebody stay with the kids. [...] We both went in separate directions. But there were these incredible moments, kind of dream-come-true opportunities for each of us. And the kids were like incredibly supportive of that.
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See also:
[After reading the book for The Last Duel, Ben Affleck] became possessed with a great sense of urgencyāāwe have to do this and get it done nowāāthat he needed Damon to share. āHeās got a busy life, heās all over the place,ā Affleck explains, āand he frankly requires being marshaled a little bit to focus and zone in.ā So Affleck laid out a plan of action: āOkay, and this is how weāre going to do it: Weāre going to do four hours a day, Iām going to schedule it, Iām going to come over thereā¦ā
ā From Matt Damonās interview with GQ (September 2021).
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[Full transcript under the cut]
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SMITH: How has your birth order informed who you are as a person?
MATT: I've thought about this a lot because my wife is the oldest of three and I'm the youngest of two. I really think that's one of the reasons we work so well. Because I think as the youngestā and you can tell me if this has been your experience, it certainly has been mine. I'm extremely adaptable. I have no need to be in charge.
And I remember, as a kid, my brother's girlfriend was on the YWCA swim team. And so my brother joined the YWA swim team, right, as the only boy. And I had to join the YWCA swim team because my mom, you know, is a professorā She was, you know, a single mom. My dad, they were divorced, but my dad had us like every other weekend and one day a week. So my mom had to figure out what to do with us after school. So I was just on the swim team with my brother. Like she just kept us together on the swim team. And it didn't strike me at the time that this was some kind of unfairness or injustice that I didn't want to be on the swim team. I just did it, you know, and I think I'm that way.
[In] my careerā your career as an actor, you're living out of a duffel bag for the whole first part of your career. And you're in this Best Western Hotel and you kind of live in the production, which is always a little chaotic. And I never really had a problem with it. It neverā it seemed like, "Yep, well, that's what I have to do." But I think Lucy and I gel together really well because sheā She's five years younger than me, but she just takes on the role that kind ofā naturally takes on that kind of leadership role. Then I'm completely fine with it.
We bought our house in L.A. years ago. We were living in New York, and we had talked about moving to L.A. And we were going out because I was going to shoot Behind The Candelabra in L.A., and so we needed to rent a house for the summer. And she went out to find the rental and saw a house for sale that was on the same street that Ben lived on, and called me and said, "There's this house and I love it!" And Ben came down and looked at it. And so I had my two favorite people on the phone. And Ben was like, "You should get this place." And Lucy said, "I love this place." And I was just like, "OK." Like we bought it and I'd never seen the house. But I knew if they love it, I'm sure it's great. And if she loves it and she's going to be happy, I know I'm going to be happy. I know it's nicer than some of the hotels I've stayed in while I'm shooting. So this is going to be totally fine. And it was. And we lived there for nine years.
SMITH: That's amazing. And now they run your company, basically, right? Artists Equity?
MATT: Actually, yeah. We're the three partners in the company. And when I was shootingā Another thing that was unique about that Odyssey experience for my kids was that when I was shooting that, Ben was shooting this movie called Animals. It's great. It's going to come out on Netflix later in the year. It's a great movie. And Lucy produced it. And so she left to go to L.A. I left to go to Europe. And we had to have somebody stay with the kids. Luckily, it happened over the spring break time. So there was like a week on one side of spring break. Then spring break happened and they could come, and then there was a week on the other side. So it worked out. But we both went in kind of separate directions. But there were these incredible moments, kind of dream-come-true opportunities for each of us. And the kids were like incredibly supportive of that.
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Ben Affleck's issue in People Magazine (2 December 2002)
Sexiest Man Alive...Ben Affleck
What makes a man sexy? One part mischief, one part adventure, one part danger? There's no mathematical equation, but it adds up to Ben Affleck
By Samantha Miller
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He was buff. He was bad. He was dressed head to toe in tight red leather. And he hardly broke a sweat dangling from a ledge 10 stories above downtown L.A. without a safety net. No wonder Ben Affleck attracted crowds of adoring females when he did his own stunt work for his upcoming action film Daredevil. āWe all swooned,ā says his costar Jennifer Garner. āHeās your basic tall, dark and handsome. Heās it. You want him to save you. I canāt imagine anyone the world would rather see swoop in and save the day than Ben.ā
Being a superhero takes more than good looksāand the same goes for being crowned this yearās Sexiest Man Alive. āBenās really loyal and really honest, really smart, really funny,ā says Matt Damon, Affleckās best buddy since boyhood. āHeās got more going for him than just about anyone Iāve ever met.ā
The 30-year-old actor is also intriguingly complex. In private that big-screen big hunk (heās 6ā2ā³) displays impressive range: An easygoing charmer. A passionate political activist. An Oscar winner. A devoted son. A self-aware grownup. A flirt. A brainiac. A goofball. A head-over-heels romantic.
Andāperhaps youāve heardāhusband-to-be to a certain Jennifer Lopez. Despite the hullabaloo over the joined-at-the-lips starsā flashy four-month courtshipāand much public clucking over Lopezās short-lived pair of previous marriagesāthose close to Affleck applaud the engagement. āThey understand each other,ā says his mother, Chris, 59, a Cambridge, Mass., fifth-and sixth-grade teacher. āSheās just a lovely person. Sheās very connected to her family. Sheās very warm. Sheās like the ideal daughter-in-law. The only downside is that she is so famous, but on the other hand, so is Ben, and whoās going to put up with that if theyāre not in that same world?ā
Meanwhile Affleckās move into the world of commitment marks an important milestone for the never-wed star, who stepped out with the likes of Shoshanna Lonstein and Famke Janssen following the 1999 breakup of his intense romance with Gwyneth Paltrow. āRecently he has matured a lot,ā says his mother. āItās no longer āIām in love, but Iām young,ā itās āI want to make a life now, Iām ready for this.ā ā Before Lopez came on the scene, recalls Daredevil director Mark Steven Johnson, āI used to joke with him about how he was going to be in his 50s hitting on 18-year-old girls. He laughed and said, āNo, I wonāt.ā ā As Affleck himself told Good Morning America in April, āWhatās going to mean the most to me [is] being a father, being a husband, being a person of whom I can really be proud.ā
Over the years his charm has attracted plenty of hopefuls. āChicks gravitate to him,ā says longtime pal Kevin Smith, director of Affleck and Lopezās upcoming Jersey Girl. āThe word on the street is that heās the ideal man, chatty, gorgeous, generous and intelligent.ā Affleckās friend and Daredevil costar Michael Clarke Duncan thinks Benās secret is simple: āIf you can get a woman to laugh, no matter how much money you have, no matter how much charisma you have, you can have that woman, and Ben can do that. Heās not this stuck-up guy who you canāt talk to.ā
On movie sets Affleck is known for his eagerness to chew the fat with anyone from electricians to camera operators. āHeās a hugger,ā says Phil Alden Robinson, who directed him in this summerās The Sum of All Fears. āHe loves being around people, and consequently he makes them happy. You canāt fake that kind of warmth.ā
Then thereās plain old brains, that attractive but all too rare accessory to brawn and a $350,000 Bentley. āBen has this nerdy smart-guy side to him,ā says Liv Tyler, his love interest in 1998ās Armageddon. āHeās obsessed with the New York Times crossword puzzle. He reads a lot. Heās really interested in knowing more about the world.ā The die-hard Democratās homework shows in his dedication to causes, from stumping for Al Gore across the country to urging Harvard University to raise wages for blue-collar employees. At a rally at the university in 2000, Affleck and Damon addressed a crowd of more than 500. āThey spoke very passionately,ā says noted historian and author Howard Zinn, a fellow speaker, āBen talked about how his father had worked at Harvard at a menial job [like Matt Damonās Good Will Hunting character, Tim Affleck, 59, labored as a custodian from 1988 to 1990] and how he understood what it was like to work for an enormously rich corporation and get a pittance.ā
Tim and Chris (who separated when Ben was 11 and later divorced) raised Benjamin Geza Affleck and his brother Casey, 27, in a working-class neighborhood in Cambridgeport, Mass. A rambunctious, outgoing youngster, Ben āwas very good at imitating people, even when he was 3 or 4,ā says Chris, who still lives in the blue clapboard house her sons grew up in (although Ben bought her a summer home on Cape Cod). By 7, he was an avid reader, Little League baseball player and budding actor. Dark End of the Street, an independent film directed by a family friend, marked his movie debut in 1979āand the first time Affleck would be smitten by his leading lady. āHe had an appropriate 7-year-old crush on the 19-year-old girlā who played his big sister, recalls Affleckās childhood acting coach David Wheeler. At 9, Ben landed a role in an educational series, The Voyage of the Mimi. āHe was very bright and intensely curious,ā says Wheeler.
And soon he became just a bit devilish. Thanks to his acting gigs (including a Burger King commercial and the 1987 miniseries Hands of a Stranger), āhe was adept at age 13 or 14 at dealing with adults,ā says Gerry Speca, his drama teacher at Cambridge Rindge and Latin public high school. āWhen he had to, he could turn on the charm. Like the Eddie Haskell syndrome.ā Unbeknownst to his mother, Ben sweet-talked bank tellers into letting him withdraw earnings that she was socking away in a college fund. Affleck was more of a partyer than was his neighbor Damon, two years older and a pal since 1980. But the two āwerenāt heartthrobs by any means,ā says Damonās brother Kyle, 35. āThey werenāt even considered cool kids. They were drama geeks.ā
Affleckāwho grew almost a foot his junior year of high schoolāattended his 1990 prom with a group of friends. He met his first serious girlfriend, Cheyenne Rothman, now 30, at summer camp when they were teens; their relationship would continue on and off over the next seven years. The following fall Affleck headed to the University of Vermont. (He applied to Harvard but was rejected despite high SAT scores.) He dropped out after one semester to head for Hollywood. āI would always say, āOh, Ben, you shouldnāt do this. You should go to college,ā ā says his mother. āBut secretly I sort of suspected that he was going to make it.ā
She was right. Roles in 1993ās Dazed and Confused and 1995ās Mallrats raised Affleckās profile as he and Damon, crashing with two other roommates in a cluttered apartment, labored on the Hunting screenplay. āHe had a hard time getting cast as anything but the biggish bully type,ā recalls Kevin Smith, who directed Mallrats. āI had some producer try to talk me out of casting Ben in Chasing Amy [1997] because he was ātoo bigā to be a romantic leading man. But I figured, if Iām a guy and I can see what a catch this dude is, thereāve gotta be women out there whoād agree.ā
Then Hunting sold for $600,000. On the first day on the set āMatt and Ben cried,ā says coproducer Chris Moore, a longtime Affleck pal. āThey had believed in it so much.ā With his mom as his dateāāIt was such a rush,ā she saysāAffleck picked up the Best Original Screenplay Oscar in 1998 alongside his best friend.
Hollywood quickly saw Affleckās beefcake potential. For Armageddon, director Michael Bay got a dentist to cap his teeth and hired a trainer to pump him up. The cameras took over from there. āI remember Ben coming to me one day and saying, āYouāre not going to believe what happened to me,ā ā recalls costar Liv Tyler. āBasically Michael Bay had just made him stand there and have running water poured over his bare torso. He didnāt even know what scene it was for.ā
He also discovered the world of celebrity dating. Sparks flew between Affleck and Gwyneth Paltrow at Good Will Huntingās 1997 premiere. The couple were an item on and off for the next two years and remain friendly. āIn Gwyneth he found a match of the minds,ā his Forces of Nature director Bronwen Hughes said earlier this year.
Affleck found the single life after their breakup action-packedābut unfulfilling. āI felt very adrift,ā he told Talk magazine in 2000. āSo I thought, āOkay, Iāll go to these parties. Iāll try to embrace this life people think I have.āā¦And I found myself even more miserable.ā In July 2001 he made a move that surprised most pals: He checked himself into Promises rehab center in Malibu for treatment for alcoholism. According to friends, his excess drinking was a problem he wanted to tackle early. āI think he figured out, āIf I keep doing this, Iām going to wind up in a place that I donāt want to be,ā ā says Michael Clarke Duncan. Affleck knew the perils better than most: His father, Tim, now a still-life photographer in Indio, Calif., is a recovering alcoholic who got sober in 1990 with his ex-wifeās help. āIām proud that he took stock of himself,ā says Tim. āAnd like most things in Benās life, whatever heās decided to undertake, heās been successful at.ā
The experience has changed more than Affleckās attitude toward partying. āIt involved a lot of introspection,ā says his mother. āHeās very, very happy right now, really easy to talk to about difficult things,ā adds Don Roos, who directed him in 2000ās Bounce. That transformation made it the right time to meet Ms. Right. āWhen you first get sober, youāre nervous about staying sober and you tend to stay close to home,ā says Roos. āI credit Jenniferāāherself a teetotalerāāwith being there to open up his life for him again.ā
Now, it seems, Lopez, 33, is his sole addictionāunless you count diamonds: Her tokens of affection from Affleck (whose Daredevil salary is $12.5 million) have included a yellow-and-white diamond bracelet and, of course, the 6.10-carat Harry Winston pink diamond ring he gave her when he proposed. In an e-mail to Diane Sawyer, Affleck called Lopez āa truly graceful beauty with an artistās soulāāand himself āthe luckiest man alive.ā
The news came as little surprise for director Kevin Smith, who watched the relationship deepen over the past few months during the Jersey Girl shoot. āAfter day one of watching them in rehearsals, I pulled him aside and said, āWithin a year,ā ā Smith says. āI know there are a ton of cynics out there, but they havenāt seen these guys together. This isnāt just Nookie Betwixt the Rich and Famous. Thereās obscene mutual respect and adoration. They both came from working-class backgrounds that led to these over-the-top career successes. Plus she finds everything he says funny.ā
Their jet-set itinerary has included a few unadvertised stops. In August Affleck took Lopez on a tour of his old haunts in South Boston, including a favorite chicken parmigiana joint and a bar featured in Good Will Hunting. They also recently lunched with Affleckās father at Benās new Beverly Hills home, on the property where Drew Barrymore lived before a house fire last year. āI think sheās nifty,ā Tim Affleck says of Lopez. āI didnāt see her as a flashy movie star any more than I see my son as a flashy movie star. Theyāre just a couple of schlub dubs like the rest of us.ā
He may be a secret schlub, but Affleck seems comfortable with his celebrityāand savvy about how to leverage it for creative as well as political causes. āBen is not a guy who is handled by handlers,ā says pal Moore, a partner with Affleck, Damon and Sean Bailey in the entertainment company LivePlanet. āHe does what he wants.ā With LivePlanet, Affleck developed the innovative HBO reality series Project Greenlight and this fallās critically acclaimed but short-lived ABC drama Push, Nevada.
One crusade close to Affleckās heart began serendipitously. In 1998 he noticed Joe Kindregan, then 10, in a motorized wheelchair watching him film a scene for Forces of Nature at Dulles Airport near Washington, D.C. Affleck came over to joke with the boy, who suffers from the rare degenerative disease ataxia-telangiectasia. The two struck up an e-mail friendship, and last year Affleck testified before Congress about the need for medical research into the condition. Affleck arranges for Joe and his family to see him about four times a year, including a recent 14th-birthday party on the set of his romantic comedy Gigli in L.A. āThey had cheeseburgers and chocolate cake in his trailer,ā says Joeās mother, Suzi, 44, a Springfield, Va., homemaker. āIāll love Ben forever for the way he puts light in my sonās eyes.ā
Moments like that make it easy to envision Affleck doting on a child of his own. āYou can just tell heāll be a fantastic dad,ā says Mark Steven Johnson, whom Affleck often quizzed about his experience as a father of three on the Daredevil shoot. āHeās a Boston boy. He wants his kid playing baseballāyou know, a Red Sox boy.ā Chris Affleck canāt wait. āIāve been urging him for the longest time,ā she says. āI want grandchildren.ā
Lopez, too, has often spoken of her desire to start a family. But right now thereās only one Red Sox boy in her lifeāand forget those who say the match is too hot not to cool down. āI didnāt need People magazine to tell me heās the sexiest man alive,ā Lopez says. āThe difference between me and People magazine is that heāll still be the sexiest man alive in my eyes when heās 100 years old.ā
Q: How were clothes key to the formation of your own personal identity?
MATT: I remember for my graduation from high school my older brother gave me his leather jacket, which was my favorite thing in the world. He gave it to me in June. I went into my room, put it on, and basically waited for fall. My brother was so cool, and because I was wearing his jacket, I was cool too.
ā From Matt Damon's interview for The Advocate (January 2000).
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Ben Affleck candid in the 1989 yearbook.
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[My eternal gratitude goes to the amazing mattfleck.memes on TikTok for noticing their clothes in these photos. Find my ravings about this under the cut.]
Like, how insane is this? And that we have photographic evidence of it?
Given their history of clothes sharing, it's not surprising that they'd wear the same jacket. We've seen them do it before. But this is not just any jacket. This was Matt's cool older brother leather jacket: Matt's "favorite thing in the world". Something that he identifies as important in shaping his personal identity, because wearing it made him feel "cool" like his brother.
He loved it so much he borrowed it for his yearbook portrait. This is how he wanted to be remembered. And then that summer Kyle gives him the jacket as a graduation gift. It is finally his. This piece of clothing that gives him so much comfort and confidence. Precisely what he'll need as he starts a new stage in his life: going off to university. And Harvard no less! That place with the stuck up kids, not like us townies. Now Matt will somehow be amongst enemy ranks, feeling like an outsider. But cloaked in his brother's leather jacket ā now his ā there's nothing that can make him feel small. With the confidence that jacket inspires in him, there's nowhere he can't go, nothing he can't do. Matt loves it so much he wears it all Summer and just waits for Fall.
But then there's Ben. Ben who's staying behind in high-school. And even if Matt is only a 5-minute walk away, it's not exactly the same thing. Matt's not there anymore. But then, sometime in that year, Ben's photographed wearing Matt's leather jacket. And he wore it often enough to show up in a candid photo in what wasn't even his own yearbook. This jacket that was Matt's favorite thing in the world, something he waited all summer to wear. This invaluable gift of confidence, of feeling good in his own skin. And he chooses to give it to Ben. He coats him with this gift, so Ben can feel cool and confident too. So Matt is there with him even when he's not.
Fortunately for us, the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School (CRLS) Yearbooks have been scanned and made available on the Internet Archive. We can use them as a resource for information on Matt and Ben's high school years (collectively Fall '84-Summer '90).
I have tried my best to scan them for pictures or mentions of Matt, Ben, & Co. I will also include information about all the school productions, as both Matt and Ben were involved in the theater department. Generally, a Fall-Winter (December) production (usually a drama), a Spring (March) production for the Massachusetts High School Drama Festival, and Summer (July) production (usually a musical). The Spring and Summer productions appear to be featured in the following year's book, likely because of the deadlines for printing the yearbooks. Confirmation of Matt or Ben's presence in the cast/crew will be provided when available.
1984-1985
Matt is a freshman. His brother, Kyle, is a senior.
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Kyle's yearbook portrait, which also lists the Damon's address (p. 62)
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1985-1986
Matt is a sophomore.
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Summer '85 production of "Guys and Dolls". Matt, a freshman, plays one of the gamblers (p. 126-127).
Fall-Winter '85 production of "Lysistrata".
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1986-1987
Matt is a junior and Ben is a freshman.
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Spring '86 production of "Bravo Cappucino!", which won 4th place in the Massachusetts High School Drama Festival (p. 120). Matt, a sophomore, plays Humpty Dumpty (AKA Toast).
Summer '86 production of "Brigadoon" (p. 122). If Matt participated, he wasn't in the main cast.
Fall-Winter '86 production of "The Visit" (p. 121). Ben, a freshman, plays Matt's son. This is also when the famous "It's not about your looks, it's about the work" conversation took place.
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1987-1988
Matt is a senior and Ben is a sophomore.
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Matt in the colored candids section (p. 8)
Matt's yearbook portrait (p. 63)
Spring '87 production of "Blood Wedding", which wins 1st place at the Massachusetts High School Drama Festival (p. 111). The Spring '88 production of "Homestead" wins 1st place too.
Summer '87 production of "Pippin" (p. 112). Matt starred as Pippin. Ben couldn't sing so he worked on the crew.
Fall '88 production of "Stage Door" (p. 110).
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Matt (4th from the left on the back row) was part of the National Honor Society (p. 130).
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1988-1989
Ben is a junior. Casey is a freshman.
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Possible Ben sighting in the colored candids section (p. 6).
Fall '89 production of "Alice in Wonderland" (p. 128). Ben plays the Caterpillar. The pictures on the left page are likely from the Summer '88 production, whose name is not mentioned.
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1989-1990
Ben is a senior. Casey is a sophomore.
Ben's yearbook portrait (p. 98); Note: "SR" is likely Soren Garcia-Rey, with whom Matt and Ben lived while writing Good Will Hunting. "AS" is likely Aaron Stockard, with whom Ben later wrote Gone Baby Gone and The Town. "CA" is likely his brother, Casey Affleck.
p. 106
p. 117
Casey Affleck on the Boys Indoor Track and Cross-Country teams (p. 147-148).
Spring '89 production of "Comedia Mania", which won 1st place at the Massachusetts High School Drama Festival (p. 28).
Around this time, my mom started learning Spanish and traveling to Central America whenever she could. She went to Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras. She went mainly to get a better sense of what was happening there and to bring the news back home to help strengthen the case against further US intervention. A lot of activists believed that if American citizens were on the ground in these countries, our government wouldnāt risk their lives by invading.
She brought me along on three of the tamer trips. To start with, weād live with local families and take language classes, and then weād spend the rest of the trip backpacking around the country, riding on buses filled with chickens. The summer we went to Guatemala, there was still fighting going on up in the mountains. Once, a truck passed me with a bunch of kids in the back. They had camo paint on their faces and guns in their hands. They were on their way to join the battle in the hills. I was seventeen at the time, and they looked like they were around my age or even younger. Iāll never forget making eye contact with one of them and seeing his blank stare. That kid had seen a lot of things I hadnāt and never would.
The next summerāit was 1989 and Iād just finished my first year of collegeāmy mom said: āMatt, Iāve been restraining myself on these trips because you and Kyle need a mom. But youāre both grown now, and you should know Iām not going to do that anymore.ā She started going to more dangerous placesāincluding Cambridgeās sister city in El Salvador. The town had been suspected of harboring guerrillas, and while she was there, the Salvadoran army came in, fired their guns in the air, and urinated in the town well to contaminate the water. Thankfully my mom was unhurt. She came home even more intent on engaging with the worldāon working to figure out what was going on, and how she could take a more active role in righting injustices.
ā Matt Damon, in his and Gary White's book The Worth of Water (2002).
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If clean water is one passion, his greatest remains his family. He will celebrate a decade of marriage this year; his wife (a former bartender whom he met while shooting in Miami) and four daughters have altered his life profoundly, he says, giving him āa big, kind of existential relief.ā
āI remember thinking, in my early 30s, that I wouldnāt [get married], you know?ā he reflects. āI didnāt think it was going to happen for me. My brother found his soul mate very young; heād just turned 26 when they were married. Heād been married for 10 years by the time I even met my wife, and I looked at this really happy, wonderful marriage and kind of went, āI guess thatās not going to happen for me.ā And then it did.ā
He refuses to be apart from his family for more than two weeks at a time; either they come to see him or he returns to Los Angeles. He is still getting used to the idea that his eldest daughter, Alexia, 17 (his wifeās from a previous marriage), will not join the rest of the family in visiting him when Bourne shifts to London in early October. āSheāll stay back with her grandmother and in school,ā he says. āSo thatās a big one for us. Weāve never split the family.ā
He adds: āI heard once, you spend all of this time trying to protect your heart, and then you have kids, and itās like you put it in their bodies and send them out into the world, and you canāt possibly know everything that comes with that. Itās a very, very different way to be in the world.ā
For just a moment a depth of emotion surges in him. The lava comes close to bubbling up, then subsides.
ā From Matt Damon's interview with The Hollywood Reporter (October 2015).
Matt Damon on recognizing the innate essence in his children and father
Interviewed by Krista Smith for Netflixās Skip Intro Podcast (19 January 2026)
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MATT: Kids come out as who they are. And I don't think I appreciated that until I had kids. [...] That is what makes me believe that there is something else. It really does. I also had that experience when my father passed away; of seeing that happen before my eyes and then instantly not recognizing him. And it was me and my brother. And if you had given me a hundred chances at a line of dialogue ā and I write professionally ā I never would have gotten it right. I said, "Kyle, have you ever seen this man before?" And he said, "I've never seen that man in my life."
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[Follows immediately after this clip. Full transcript under the cut.]
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SMITH: So do you see some of these attributes in your own daughters? Like oldest, youngest?
MATT: Yeah, I mean, I definitely see that effect of birth order. But also, I don't know if it's been yourā I reallyā Kids come out as who they are. And I don't think I appreciated that until I had kids.
SMITH: Absolutely.
MATT: Really see that, you know...
SMITH: And so I joke I could take all the natal vitamins. I can do all the things. These kids come out hardwired.
MATT: They really are hardwired.
SMITH: It's amazing.
MATT: Their spirits are, you knowā
SMITH: Totally.
MATT: That is what makes me believe that there is something else. It really does. I also had that experience when my father passed away; of seeing that happen before my eyes and then instantly not recognizing him. And it was me and my brother. And if you had given me a hundred chances at a line of dialogue ā and I write professionally ā I never would have gotten it right. I said, "Kyle, have you ever seen this man before?" And he said, "I've never seen that man in my life." And so it really made me appreciate that idea thatā They say Namaste and what that means is the light in me sees the light in you, right? That really, in a very deep way, kind of brought that home. Like, "Oh, I get it." And that's what I see with my kids. When they come, it's like you see who they are from the second you look at them.
MATT: Wow, I never thought of that. I lost both my parents a while ago, but I've never thought about that: looking completely different. That's just the way in which you just articulated that.
MATT: It was like he was replaced, in the blink of an eye, by some old man from central casting; that just was there. And yeah, they said at the place, "People like to stay with the body." And my brother and I were like, "We're good." We'd been there for 48 straight hours. And we were like, we don't ever want to see this place again. See you later. Like, he's not here.
"For Wema, water was life" | The Worth of Water excerpt
[Note: This is an excerpt from Gary White and Matt Damon's book The Worth of Water: Our Story of Chasing Solutions to the World's Greatest Challenge (March 2022), published by Penguin. This excerpt was retrieved from the sample provided for the Kindle Edition (Loc. 22 - 90).]
1. WHAT THE HELL IS THE āWATER ISSUEā?
POV: Matt Damon
Iāve spent most of my life telling stories on-screen, not on the pageāso as I was thinking about how to begin this book, I thought about how Iād start the movie. Weād fade in on a hut I visited in rural Zambia in 2006. I can still see it clearly in my mind: earthen brick walls, dirt floor, thatched roof. The landscape around it was usually dry, but because this was April, the end of the rainy season, the ground was covered, in parts, with a thin blanket of green. I was sitting outside the hut, waiting for a teenager to get home from school.
I was in Zambia because Bonoāthe rock star who spends his spare time fighting to end extreme povertyāhad been pestering me to go. āPestā is Bonoās word. He wears it like a badge of honor. He takes pride in getting peopleāpoliticians especially, but others, tooāto do things they wouldnāt otherwise do, if he wasnāt pestering them. The guy is really good at it. Bono believes that seeing poverty up close can change a personās priorities, can compel them to go out and do something about it. So he and his colleagues at the organization he started, DATAāwhich would eventually become the ONE Campaignāhad been pressuring me to join them on a trip to Africa. Heād been pressuring me with the zeal of a telemarketer. He was not going to take no for an answer.
My answer wasnāt no, exactly. I just had a lot going on in my life. My wife would be seven months pregnant at the time of the trip, and I had only a small window of time before my next movie. So I told Bono it just wasnāt a good time. He looked at me and said, āItās never going to be a good time.ā Which, of course, was totally right.
I had no grand illusions about the point of going on this trip. Itās not like Iād be changing anybodyās life. Bono likes to say that thereās nothing worse than a rock star with a cause, but an actor with a cause is a close second. I winced at the mental image of me walking through the bush or an urban slum somewhere, looking concerned, and then flying home to my comfortable life. But then I thought: thatās an even dumber excuse for not going than āIām busy.ā The more I thought about the trip, the more I realized that I wanted to go and meet some of the people who live in these extremely poor places, to see firsthand the challenges they face, and to figure out whether there was something something I could be doing to help. So I told Bono Iād go, and my older brother, Kyle, agreed to come along, too.
The trip was about two weeks long. It took us to slums and rural villages across South Africa and Zambia. DATA had set it up like a college mini course. Each day, we learned about a different challenge that kept people from breaking the cycle of poverty: underfunded health systems, the challenges of life in a slum, the HIV/AIDS crisis. We read briefing books about each issue, visited organizations that were trying to tackle them, and, most important, talked with the people.
On one of our last days in Zambia, we were going to learn about water. It wasnāt clear to me why. I understood why we had been focusing on HIV/AIDS and educationāthese were issues that you read about in the news, issues that people talked about or signed petitions about or donated in support of. But when I heard weād be spending the day on the āwater issue,ā I wasnāt sure what issue that was, exactly. I guessed the water was contaminated.
Then I read my issue brief. It said, yes, the water was contaminatedāso much so that waterborne diseases were killing a child about every twenty seconds. But the water was also hard to access. There were no water pipes in these villages, no water taps in peopleās homes. Somebody had to go get the water and bring it back, and that somebody was almost always a woman or a girl. This was their responsibility: to walk as far as necessary to whatever water source they could find and fill their plastic jerrican, a five-gallon water jug that weighs more than forty pounds when full. Then they turn around and carry it home. And the next day they wake up and do it again.
To see what that was like, we drove four hours from Zambiaās capital, Lusaka, to a village with a well that a partner of DATAās helped build. The staff knew of a family who lived close to the road. Their daughter Wema was fourteen, and every day after school she walked to the well to get water for her family. Sheād agreed to let us walk with her, but when we arrived at her home, it was empty. Not just the home, but the whole area. There was no village center that I could see; all the huts were spread out. It was very still, very quiet, and we just sat there for a while, waiting.
Eventually we saw Wema coming toward us down the path. She was carrying books and wearing a simple blue dress that looked like a school uniform. She greeted us shyly, then put down her books and went to fetch her familyās jerrican.
At first, as we started walking to the well, the conversation was awkward. Which wasnāt really a surprise. Wema, who walked alone to this well every day, suddenly had an entourage of trip coordinators and village officials, plus an overeager movie actor. She and I didnāt speak the same language, so we had to rely on an interpreter. Still, as we walked, everybody else hung back a bit, giving us some space. Her responses to my questions were pretty short, but after a while we both relaxed a little, and even the silences felt natural enough. It was a peaceful walk down a country road.
After half an hour or so, we arrived at the well. Somebody suggested I try my hand at it. I had just finished filming one of the Jason Bourne movies, so I thought I was in pretty good shape. But pumping water from this well was harder than it looked. Wema and I laughed as I struggled with it. She had this incredibly practiced way of working the pump and then hefting this big, heavy yellow can up onto her head, where she kept it balanced with the help of one hand. This was easy to admire until you remembered (if youād let yourself forget) that this was work for her: an inescapable, essential chore.
On our way back, it started to rain. Nobody said anything about it; we just kept walking. Thereās something about succumbing to the rain and accepting youāre going to get soaked that loosens people up. The conversation got easier. I asked the girl if she wanted to live in the same village when she grew up. She smiled at me, a little shy againāas if she was debating whether or not to answer. After a moment, she did. āI want to go to Lusaka,ā she said, āand become a nurse.ā
The main reason Iām optimisticāactually, the only reason I can be optimisticāis that Wema was able to go to school. It took half an hour to walk to the well we visited, but an hour of walking every day left her enough time to attend school and do her homework before the sun setāthe village had no electricity, so after dark it was impossible to read a book. DATA introduced me to her because she was, in relative terms, a success storyāa girl lucky enough to have a well close by so she could spend a good part of her days learning. Millions of girls arenāt so lucky. For them, getting water doesnāt take one hour; it takes three or four or six. Itās what they do: they walk for water. That necessity keeps them from going to school, or working in the fields to earn money for their families, or creating something they can sell at a market. In fact, in some regions of India, water is so scarce that men take āwater wivesāāsecond and even third wives who spend all day, every day, gathering water for the family.
I kept coming back to that old adage: āWater is life.ā How many hours of that fourteen-year-oldās life had already been saved because someone thought to dig a well a mile away from her house instead of four or five? That decision was the reason she could spend her days doing more than walking to and from the well. It was the reason she was able to pursue a dream that felt so big and audacious she hesitated even to say it out loud. For Wema, water was life; it was also a shot at a better life.