From Good Will Hunting to Ford V. Ferrari, Matt Damon has made plenty of appearances in films in his nearly 33-year film career. But how much exactly does Damon make whenever he stars in a film?
Since Matt Damon has been in so many films, he makes an estimated/average of 10+ million dollars per film. A good portion of his income was from his hit movie series, Bourne, four action-thriller films that made a combined $1.665 billion.
Getting to this road wasn’t easy, however, and Matt Damon has had a long road to reaching the path to stardom he is at today.
Early Years in Acting
Matt Damon began his acting career in 1988 when he had a role in the film Mystic Pizza while he was enrolled at Harvard University – not really a role he is known for. It wouldn’t take until his breakthrough role in 1997, Good Will Hunting, that Matt Damon would go on to become a household name.
This movie not only blasted him, as well as Ben Affleck, into the limelight but brought him worldwide acclaim. The film, which he co-wrote the screenplay for with Affleck, won two Academy Awards, one for Best Screenplay and the other for Best Supporting Actor for Robin Williams, and was nominated for a total of nine.
That wasn’t the end of Good Will Hunting’s reign over awards either. It won a combined total of 24 wins from multiple award shows, as well as have a combined total of 60 nominations. Most of these wins were for Damon and his co-writer, Affleck, for their script.
They received praise, even becoming a New York Times critic pick back in 1997, which is a rare feat, saying that the “film is bright and knowing enough to bring fresh energy” between the characters, making the viewer really connect with them. The screenplay is known to be one of the best examples out there.
From there, he only continued his rise to the top – as well as his rise in his bank account.
The Bourne Series
Matt Damon started to book more roles after his Academy Award wins in 1997, including the 1998 Steven Speilberg hit, Saving Private Ryan, which won five Academy Awards. Even so, it wasn’t until 2002 when Matt Damon starred in the first of four films, titled The Bourne Identity.
The movie ended up doing well, grossing over $214 million worldwide. Not only did it spawn on three sequels, but it also gave Damon a chance to further spread his talents as an action star, rather than someone who focused solely on dramas, which gave move studios more incentive to gift the actor more money.
With each new movie, Damon continued to gain a higher paycheck. For the latest installment in 2016, Damon reportedly made “$25 million,” if the indication to what he made for The Martian the year prior means anything.
Continuing His Climb
Damon would go on to star in multiple films that did high-levels at the box office. Some of these include The Departed in 2006, True Grit in 2010, Interstellar in 2014, and The Martian in 2015.
The latter was nominated for seven Academy Awards the following year, one of which being Best Actor for Damon, while also being nominated for multiple other awards as well. This includes the Golden Globes, AFI Awards, and many more.
For his role in The Martian, he was reportedly paid “25 million” to star, which is a steep increase to what he was originally paid when he starred in Good Will Hunting, at $600,000.
What’s In Store for the Future
Matt Damon has multiple different ventures coming up in the near future, including titles The Last Duel, Thirst, and Witness for the Prosecution, all of which are producing or executive producing credits.
It seems that after Ford V. Ferrari, Damon took a bit of a break from acting, and decided to focus on the background scenes of films rather than be the star, at least according to the credits that are online.
Whether he will be paid as much as he was for The Martian, we won’t know until after these projects are released.
Even so, it’s clear that Matt Damon has moved his way up to the top of the Hollywood pyramid regarding paychecks – and that he’s only going to continue to climb if he keeps making movies as popular as The Bourne series.