Do we like Matt Damon?
Our score: 8 out of 10. Decent and on the right side, with two old foot-in-mouth moments he apologised for and a lot of real good.
Damon grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, after his parents divorced, and met Ben Affleck at 10 when he lived two blocks away. He studied English at Harvard but left 12 credits short to act. The pair co-wrote Good Will Hunting, which won them the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay in 1997, and he went on to the Bourne films and The Martian.
The first clanger came in December 2017, when his comments about Hollywood sexual misconduct scandals drew a pile-on. He apologised on the Today show in January 2018, saying he should “get in the back seat and close my mouth for a while.” An apology only counts if what follows changes, and nothing since turned up to suggest he dug in.
The second was in 2021. In a Sunday Times interview he said he had retired the f-slur, and the backlash was swift. He then said he had never used it toward anyone in his personal life, that he doesn't use slurs of any kind, and “I stand with the LGBTQ+ community.” Fans were split on whether that cleaned it up, but it was a clumsy comment, not a campaign.
On the harm check, nothing turned up of him campaigning against trans people, women, migrants or the planet, and no conspiracy rabbit holes. His recent films with Christopher Nolan and Ben Affleck, such as Oppenheimer and Air, don't raise a flag either. In January he wore a “Be Good” pin to The Rip premiere and called the fatal ICE shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis “incredibly alarming”, adding that he had heard from friends in law enforcement that it wasn't how they would handle it.
On the lawsuit, two Miami-Dade sergeants allege that The Rip borrows so many details from a real 2016 case that people may think they committed the crimes shown. The defendant is Artists Equity, not Damon personally. Its lawyer said in a March letter that the film doesn't claim to be a true story and carries a disclaimer. No ruling had been reported at the time of the article.
The real good stuff is Water.org, the charity he co-founded with engineer Gary White to help people in poverty get safe water and sanitation. In 2024 the pair won the J. William Fulbright Prize for International Understanding for it, which came with a US$50,000 donation to Water.org. That's a long-running commitment, not a one-off photo op.