The Good Shepherd is a 2006 spy film directed by Robert De Niro and starring Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie, with an extensive supporting cast. Although it is a fictional film loosely based on real events, it is advertised as telling the untold story of the birth of counter-intelligence in the Central Intelligence Agency. The film's main character, Edward Wilson (portrayed by Matt Damon), is loosely based on James Jesus Angleton and Richard M. Bissell. This was Joe Pesci's first film appearance after his six year hiatus from acting between 1999 and 2005.

Plot[link]

This article's plot summary may be too long or excessively detailed. Please help improve it by removing unnecessary details and making it more concise. (December 2011)

A photograph and an audio recording on reel-to-reel tape are dropped off anonymously at the home of Edward Wilson (Matt Damon), a senior CIA officer, after the 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba fails due to an undisclosed leak. While riding to work on the bus, Edward is approached by a young boy who asks if Edward has change for a dollar. Upon arriving at work, Edward's assistant checks the serial number of the dollar against a long list of serial numbers assigned to various code names and confirms that Edward has been given a dollar from "Cardinal". The movie then flashes back to 1939.

In 1939 Edward is at Yale University and is invited to join Skull and Bones, a secret society that grooms future U.S. leaders. He is compelled to disclose a secret as part of his initiation: he reveals that as a young boy in 1925 he discovered the suicide note left by his father, Thomas (Timothy Hutton), although he says he never read it. After the ceremony, a fraternity brother tells him that Edward's father, an admiral, was to be chosen as Secretary of the Navy, until his loyalties were questioned. Afterwards Edward is recruited by an FBI agent Sam Murach (Alec Baldwin), who claims that Edward's poetry professor, Dr. Fredericks (Michael Gambon), is a Nazi spy, asking Edward to expose his professor's background as well as implying that the Professor is homosexual: Edward's actions result in Dr. Fredericks' forced resignation from the university.

Edward begins a relationship with a deaf student named Laura (Tammy Blanchard), but while on Deer Island, Edward meets and is later aggressively seduced by Margaret 'Clover' Russell (Angelina Jolie), his friend's sister. General Bill Sullivan (Robert De Niro) asks Edward to join the OSS, offering him a post in London.

Later while Edward and Laura are at the beach, Clover's brother, John, privately reveals that Clover is pregnant with Edward's child and asks him to "do what is expected." Laura, an able lip-reader, sees and walks away. Edward marries Clover. At the wedding reception Edward accepts an offer of a position in the London OSS office from General Sullivan, requiring him to be in England in one week, leaving his newlywed wife. In London he meets his former professor Dr. Fredericks, who is actually a British intelligence operative who had sought to infiltrate a Nazi organization while at Yale, causing the American authorities to suspect that he was a Nazi spy. Despite this, Fredericks recognized Edward's gifts and recommended that he be trained in counter-espionage in London.

An intelligence officer in the British SOE, Arch Cummings (Billy Crudup), tells Edward that Fredericks' indiscriminate homosexual relationships pose a security risk; Edward is asked to deal with his mentor, but Fredericks refuses the chivalrous suggestion to protect himself by returning to teaching. He says he will understand if Wilson wants to "tie his shoe" (a signal to watchers that the meeting went badly). Edward delays, prompting Fredericks to kneel down and tie Edward's shoe for him. As their meeting ends, he advises Wilson to "quit... while you still have a soul", leaves, and is brutally killed, his body being dumped into the Thames.

The time shifts to post-war Berlin, where the Allies and the Soviets, in a race for technological superiority, are trying to recruit as many German scientists as possible. Edward encounters his Soviet counterpart, codenamed "Ulysses", who praises Edward. They plan an exchange of scientists — the Soviets asking for German Nazi and Slavic scientists, while the Americans seek Jewish scientists.

Edward is assisted by an interpreter, Hanna Schiller (Martina Gedeck), who wears what appears to be a hearing aid. After Edward learns from his son during a rare phone call home that Clover is having an affair, he accepts Hanna's invitation to dinner at her home, and sleeps with her. While they are making love, Edward realizes that Hanna can hear without the use of her hearing aid, exposing her as a Soviet operative. She is killed and Ulysses is notified by her hearing aid being planted in his teapot.

After six years in London, Edward returns home to a distant Clover, who now prefers to be called Margaret. Edward presents his son with a miniature model ship inside a glass watch-casing. Margaret explains that her brother was killed in the war; she also confesses that she previously had a brief relationship with another man. When she asks if he had any relationships, Edward replies that "it was a mistake." General Sullivan approaches Wilson again to help form a new foreign intelligence organization - the CIA - where Wilson will work with his former colleague, Richard Hayes (Lee Pace), under Phillip Allen (William Hurt). Edward accepts, hiding the details of his position from everyone but Clover/Margaret. Allen discloses his love of Swiss chocolate, prompting Edward to later ask Murach if the FBI has any information on Allen: the resulting file intimates that Allen holds substantial funds in Swiss accounts.

Edward's first assignment deals with coffee in Central America where the Russians are trying to gain influence. Edward spots Ulysses in the background of footage of the country's leader, but doesn't disclose this. Another agent is sent covertly as a representative of the Mayan Coffee Company; Edward warns him not to wear his Yale class ring. Edward arranges for airplanes to fly over and release locusts during a public event where the Russians (including Ulysses) are present in order to intimidate the Central American leader. Edward later receives a can of Mayan Coffee presumably from Ulysses, containing a severed finger, and Yale class ring, evidently of the American agent. Wilson and Clover go to a Christmas party with their son, who wets himself, out of a heightened state of fear resulting from his fragmented awareness that his father is involved in dark secrets.

A Russian requesting asylum and claiming to be high-ranking KGB man Valentin Mironov, who knows Ulysses, is interviewed by Edward. Edward is fully convinced of his honesty. While attending the theater with Mironov and Cummings, Edward encounters his former sweetheart, Laura. They leave the theater separately, meet at a restaurant and rekindle their old romance.

Sometime later, Margaret anonymously receives photos of Laura and Edward getting into a taxi together and kissing. A distraught Margaret confronts him. Edward ends the relationship with Laura by returning her jeweled crucifix, which he had kept from their college romance days.

Then a Russian defector appears, claiming that he is the real Valentin Mironov, and that the other man actually is Yuri Modin, a KGB operative working for Ulysses. Edward does not believe him, and agents beat and torture the man, and administer liquid LSD because of its alleged truth serum properties. Despite the combined effects of drugs and torture, the second defector insists that he is the true Mironov. He further ridicules his interrogators for their need to believe in the myth of Soviet power which he calls a "great show" and "painted rust". Realising that he will never be believed, the defector hurls himself through the window to the pavement several stories below. The first man claiming to be Valentin Mironov, who has watched the entire ordeal together with Edward, then offers to take LSD to prove his innocence, but Edward doesn't think it's necessary.

Edward visits his son, Edward Jr., at Yale, where he has also joined the Skull and Bones society and has been approached for recruitment by the CIA. Margaret pleads with Edward to persuade their son not to accept, but Edward Jr. joins anyway, believing it will bring him closer to his loving, but distant, father. This widens the rift between Edward and Margaret. Later Edward Jr. overhears Edward and Hays discuss the upcoming Bay of Pigs invasion; Wilson suspects that Edward Jr. may have overheard the conversation and warns his son to be silent. Margaret moves to her mother's home in Arizona.

The film returns to the recording dropped off at the beginning of the movie. After analysis of clues such as the ceiling fan's brand name and the church bells and other sounds heard on the tape, CIA specialists deduce that the photograph may have been taken in Leopoldville, in the Congo. Edward goes there and finds the room. He realizes that the photograph and tape are of his son Edward Jr. when he sees the model ship in the glass watch-casing on the nightstand; its blurred image was the one object in the photo that the CIA team was unable to identify. Ulysses is there and plays Edward an unedited version of the tape, revealing Edward Jr. repeating to his lover, a Soviet spy named Miriam, the classified information he overheard his father discussing. Thus the Cubans and Soviets learned of the upcoming CIA landing at the Bay of Pigs. Ulysses encourages Edward to spy for the Soviets in exchange for them protecting his son. Edward is non-committal, however; he confronts his son, who says that he is in love with the woman and plans to marry her. His son refuses to believe that she is an intelligence agent.

Edward exposes Valentin as Soviet spy Yuri Modin after finding evidence of his true identity in a book given to him by Arch Cummings, who is thus exposed as a co-conspirator. Cummings flees to the USSR. After meeting Ulysses in a museum and refusing to betray his country, Edward explains that as the Soviets have won in Cuba it is not necessary to hurt his son. Ulysses notes of Edward Jr.'s fiancée: "neither of us can be sure about her", and asks Edward, "You want her to be part of your family, don't you?" Later, Ulysses' aide asks him for change to purchase his daughter a souvenir from the gift shop. Edward asks how much it is, and hands him a one dollar bill, commenting that a cardinal rule of democracy is generosity, thus confirming that the aide is Edward's defector in place.

Edward and Margaret arrive separately in the Congo for Edward Jr.'s wedding. His fiancée Miriam travels on a small plane to the ceremony but mid-flight is thrown out of the plane. When she fails to arrive at the church, Edward informs a worried Edward Jr. that she is dead. Edward denies any responsibility when Edward Jr. asks; but is visibly affected when his son reveals that Miriam was pregnant.

Edward meets with fellow Skull and Bones classmate Hayes (loosely based on Richard Helms) at the new CIA headquarters still under construction. Hayes tells him that Allen is resigning under a cloud of financial improprieties (after receiving copies of the Swiss accounts delivered in a chocolate box), and that the President has asked him to be the new Director. The President has directed him to do some "housecleaning" and he tells Edward that he needs someone he can trust, saying, "after all, we're still brothers" and that Edward is the "CIA's heart and soul". He then tells Edward he will be the first head of counter-intelligence. Edward notes the inscription on the new marble wall of the CIA lobby: "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free (John 8:32)".

Edward is then shown pulling from his home safe the suicide note that his father, Thomas, had left and in which his father's words, only now read by Edward, reveal that he had betrayed his country. He left loving words for his wife and son, particularly urging the latter to grow up to be a good man, husband and father and to live a life of decency and truth. Edward burns the note.

The film ends with Edward leaving his old office and moving to his new wing in the CIA.

Cast[link]

Damon, De Niro, Gedeck and Hutton at the February 2007 premiere of the film in Berlin

• Matt Damon as Edward Wilson, Sr.; based on James Jesus Angleton
• Angelina Jolie as Margaret "Clover" Russell Wilson
• Robert De Niro as General William "Bill" Sullivan; based on William Donovan
• Alec Baldwin as FBI Agent Samuel "Sam" Murach
• Billy Crudup as Archibald "Arch" Cummings; based on Kim Philby
• Tammy Blanchard as Laura
• Keir Dullea as Senator John Russell, Sr.
• Michael Gambon as Dr. Fredericks
• Martina Gedeck as Hanna Schiller
• Timothy Hutton as Admiral Thomas Wilson
• William Hurt as CIA Director Philip Allen; based on Allen Dulles
• Gabriel Macht as John Russell, Jr.
• Lee Pace as Deputy Director Richard Hayes; based on Richard Helms
• Joe Pesci as Joseph Palmi; based partly on Sam Giancana and Santo Trafficante Jr.
• Eddie Redmayne as older Edward Wilson, Jr.
• John Sessions as Valentin Mironov #1/Yuri Modin; based on Anatoliy Golitsyn
• Mark Ivanir as Valentin Mironov #2; based on Yuri Nosenko
• Oleg Stefan as Ulysses/Stas Siyanko
• John Turturro as Ray Brocco; based on Angleton deputy Raymond Rocca
• Liya Kebede as Miriam.

This marked Pesci's return to acting after an eight-year absence from the screen following Lethal Weapon 4.

Production[link]

Eric Roth wrote the screenplay in 1994 for Francis Ford Coppola and Columbia Pictures.^[2] Roth read Norman Mailer's Harlot's Ghost and became intrigued with the people who built the CIA.^[3] Coppola left the project because he could not relate to the characters due to their lack of emotion (although he retained a credit as co-executive producer).^[2] Wayne Wang was set to direct and even conducted some location scouting but management changes at Columbia ended his involvement. The new administration gave Roth a list of directors to choose from and one of them was Philip Kaufman. He felt that Roth's script, whose original structure was linear, should go back and forth in time to "give it a more contemporary feeling".^[4] Kaufman and Roth worked on the project for a year and then the management changed at the studio again. The new studio head had no interest in spy films unless they could get a movie star like Tom Cruise to appear in the film.

The project languished until John Frankenheimer signed on to make the film with MGM agreeing to purchase the rights. He wanted Robert De Niro to star, having just worked together on Ronin. De Niro had been developing his own spy story about the CIA from the Bay of Pigs Invasion to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and agreed to appear in the film.^[4] During pre-production in 2002, Frankenheimer died. According to producer Jane Rosenthal, this had been Robert De Niro's pet project for nine years, but it proved difficult to produce in a pre-9/11 world and had to compete with his busy schedule as an actor. The actor said in an interview, “I had always been interested in the Cold War. I was raised in the Cold War. All of the intelligence stuff was interesting to me”.^[5] De Niro and Roth ended up making a deal: Roth would write up De Niro's idea into a screenplay if the actor would direct his existing script. If The Good Shepherd proved to be a commercial success then their follow-up would be De Niro's pitch.^[2]

De Niro took the project to Universal Pictures where producer Graham King agreed to help finance the $110+ million budget. He had a deal with Leonardo DiCaprio, who was interested in playing the film's protagonist Edward Wilson.^[5] De Niro planned to shoot the movie in early 2005 but DiCaprio could not do it then because he was making The Departed for Martin Scorsese.^[2] King left with him and so did his financial backing. De Niro approached Matt Damon, who was also doing The Departed but would be done earlier than DiCaprio and De Niro would only have to wait six months to do the film with him.^[5] Initially, Damon turned De Niro down because he was scheduled to shoot Steven Soderbergh's The Informant!. Soderbergh agreed to delay filming and Damon agreed to star as Wilson. James Robinson's Morgan Creek Productions agreed to help finance the film with a budget under $90 million which meant that many of the principal actors, Damon included, would have to waive their usual salaries to keep costs down.^[5]

De Niro was not interested in making a spy movie with flashy violence and exciting car chases. “I just like it when things happen for a reason. So I want to downplay the violence, depict it in a muted way. In those days, it was a gentleman's game”.^[5] He and Roth were also interested in showing how absolute power corrupted the leaders of the CIA. Early on, De Niro said in an interview, “they tried to do what they thought was right. And then, as they went on, they became overconfident and started doing things that are not always in our best interests”.^[5] In preparation for the film, De Niro watched spy films like The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, The Third Man, and Smiley's People.^[6]

He also hired retired CIA agent Milton Bearden to serve as a technical adviser on the film. They had first worked together on Meet the Parents where De Niro played a retired CIA agent.^[7] Bearden agreed to take De Niro through Afghanistan to the north-west frontier of Pakistan and into Moscow for a guided tour of intelligence gathering. Damon also spent time with Bearden as well as visiting several of the locations depicted in the film and reading several books on the CIA.^[8] Bearden also made sure that the historical aspects were correct but fictionalized to a certain degree.^[7]

Principal photography began on August 18, 2005, with shooting taking place in New York City, Washington D.C., London and the Dominican Republic. Three-time Academy Award-winning art director Jeannine Oppewall was assigned art director for The Good Shepherd, which would eventually earn Oppewall her fourth Oscar nomination for Best Art Design.^[8] She conducted a large amount of research for the film that filled ten to twelve 6-inch-thick (150 mm) three-ring binders. It took her a week to organize the number of set locations due to the large amounts of settings in the script, which included Cuba, Léopoldville, London, Guatemala, Moscow, New York and New Haven, Connecticut, among other places.

Although the vast majority of the movie was filmed in New York, the only scenes that are actually set in New York were filmed at a house in the Long Island town, Manhasset. As a result, many sets had to be constructed under Oppewall's direction, including a Skull and Bones headquarters and the Berlin set, which was built on the Brooklyn Navy Yard.^[8] The interiors of the CIA were built in the Brooklyn Armory, a large edifice built in 1901 for the United States Cavalry. She also visited the CIA's headquarters in Washington, D.C. and worked with Bearden to create sets for the CIA's offices, Technical Room and Communications Room.

Since the lead character originally aspired to be a poet, Oppewall incorporated many visual poetic symbols into the film, including a large number of mirrors to represent the duplicity of the CIA, full rigged ships as symbols of the state and eagle symbols, which were used in ironic situations such as suspect interrogations. Her team tracked down the right set dressings and also found authentic Teletype machines, reel-to-reel tape recorders and radios used in the CIA during that time.^[8]

Music[link]

The music for the film was by Bruce Fowler and Marcelo Zarvos. They replaced James Horner, who left the project due to creative differences.^[9]

The violin solo is an extract from Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto In D though this is misattributed to Marcelo Zarvos on the soundtrack CD.

Historical accuracy[link]

Edward Wilson, the character played by Matt Damon, is based at least in part on James Jesus Angleton, the long-serving director of the CIA's counter-intelligence staff who also fell victim to intense paranoia during his career, and covert operations specialist Richard Bissell.^[5] Bill Sullivan, the character played by Robert De Niro, is based on William Stephenson and William Joseph Donovan. William Hurt's character Phillip Allen is likely based on former CIA Director Allen Dulles, while Lee Pace's character Richard Hayes shares some similarities, including a similar name, to Dulles' eventual successor Richard Helms.^[10]

High-ranking British operative turned Soviet mole, Arch Cummings, bears some similarities to Kim Philby (who fled to the USSR after being exposed and spent his last years friendless and mired in alcoholism). The character Yuri Modin shares similar characteristics to Soviet defector Anatoliy Golitsyn; the real Yuri Modin was a KGB officer who was the controller of the Cambridge Five spies in the UK. The character of Dr. Ibanez bears some similarities to Jacobo Arbenz.^[10]

Oscar-winning actor Joe Pesci appears in one scene as a Mafia boss ("Joseph Palmi") who, it is implied in the film, is a fictionalized composite of Santo Trafficante Jr. and Sam Giancana (in one scene it is mentioned that Castro has seized "three of [Palmi's] casinos and thrown him out of Cuba." In fact, Castro did nationalize several casinos owned by both Chicago and Florida organized crime interests). The CIA recruited such mafiosi for multiple assassination attempts against Fidel Castro. The story thread, however, is not fully developed in the film.

In May, 2007, the Center for the Study of Intelligence, a history group with the CIA, held a round-table with a number of on-staff historians to discuss the film. The discussion was publicly released as an article; it covered the film's depiction of the OSS and CIA, the accuracy of the film's depiction of both the events and atmosphere of the period, and discussed factual details surrounding the actual persons on whom some of the film's characters were based. The general consensus was that although the film was meticulous in getting small details (especially artifacts) correct, the overall perception portrayed by the movie was seriously flawed. One of the historians said:

A film can take a strictly documentary approach .. If that's the standard, then anyone with historical sense is going to dislike the liberties The Good Shepherd takes. If one approaches the film as a work of art, one must still ask if there is truth in the story-telling. Does it convey the sense of the time: the atmosphere, the motivations, the tone, and the challenges? I think we all agree that the film fails that test as well. It fails because it inserts themes we know from our studies of the period were not there: the overarching economic interest, the WASP mafia dominance, the cynicism, the dark perspective.^[10]

The article also addressed inaccurate but enduring beliefs that Yale's famous secret society Skull and Bones was an incubator of the U.S. Intelligence Community.

Bay of Pigs Invasion leak[link]

The film depicts the Bay of Pigs Invasion failure as the result of a leak within the CIA. James K. Galbraith wrote that the Taylor Report on the invasion confirmed the existence of a leak:

One of the great travesties of the Cold War surfaced on April 29, 2000 when the Washington Post reported the declassification in full of General Maxwell Taylor's June, 1961 special report on the Bay of Pigs invasion. Partial versions of this document have been available for decades. But only now did its darkest secret spill. Here is what Taylor reported to Kennedy. The Russians knew the date of the invasion (Therefore, Castro also knew.) The CIA, headed by Allen Dulles, knew that the Russians knew (Therefore, they knew the invasion would fail). The leak did not come from the invasion force; it had happened before the Cuban exiles were themselves briefed on the date. Kennedy was not informed. Nor, of course, were the exiles. And knowing all this, Dulles ordered the operation forward.^[11]

However, one of the panel of CIA historians who discussed the movie in a round table strongly disagreed that the leak was crucial, saying:

Even if the operation had initially succeeded, the idea that this paramilitary battalion would have melted into the jungles and mountains to spawn a general uprising against Castro is fatuous. CIA's own analysts judged that Castro's popular support was strong and that he controlled the army and the security services. Even if the group had secured the beachhead, its members eventually would have been hunted down. The supposed leak had nothing to do with historical reality.^[10]

Reaction[link]

The Good Shepherd was released on December 22, 2006 in 2,215 theaters, grossing $9.9 million on its opening weekend. It went on to make $59.9 million in North America and $39.5 million in the rest of the world for a worldwide total of $99.4 million.^[12]

Critical reception[link]

The film received mixed reviews. In her review for The New York Times, Manohla Dargis wrote, "The Good Shepherd is an origin story about the C.I.A., and for the filmmakers that story boils down to fathers who fail their sons, a suspect metaphor that here becomes all too ploddingly literal", but praised De Niro's direction: "Among the film’s most striking visual tropes is the image of Wilson simply going to work in the capital alongside other similarly dressed men, a spectral army clutching briefcases and silently marching to uncertain victory".^[13] Kenneth Turan, in his review for the Los Angeles Times, praised Matt Damon's performance: "Damon, in his second major role of the year (after The Departed) once again demonstrates his ability to convey emotional reserves, to animate a character from the inside out and create a man we can sense has more of an interior life than he is willing to let on".^[14]

Time magazine's Richard Corliss also gave Damon a positive notice in his review: "Damon is terrific in the role-all-knowing, never overtly expressing a feeling. Indeed, so is everyone else in this intricate, understated but ultimately devastating account of how secrets, when they are left to fester, can become an illness, dangerous to those who keep them, more so to nations that base their policies on them".^[15] In his review for The New York Observer, Andrew Sarris wrote, "Still, no previous American film has ventured into this still largely unknown territory with such authority and emotional detachment. For this reason alone, The Good Shepherd is must-see viewing".^[16] USA Today gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, "What makes the story work so powerfully is his focus on a multidimensional individual—Wilson—thereby creating a stirring personal tale about the inner workings of the clandestine government agency".^[17] Entertainment Weekly gave the film a "B" rating and Lisa Schwarzbaum praised De Niro's direction and Damon's performance, noting the latter's maturation as an actor.^[18]

Newsweek magazine's David Ansen wrote, "For the film's mesmerizing first 50 minutes I thought De Niro might pull off the Godfather of spy movies ... Still, even if the movie's vast reach exceeds its grasp, it's a spellbinding history lesson".^[19] However, Peter Travers of Rolling Stone magazine opined, "It's tough to slog through a movie that has no pulse".^[20] In his review for the Chicago Sun-Times, Jim Emerson wrote, "If you think George Tenet's Central Intelligence Agency was a disaster, wait until you see Robert De Niro's torpid, ineffectual movie about the history of the agency".^[21] Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian gave the film two out of five stars and criticized Damon's performance: "And why is Damon allowed to act in such a callow, boring way? As ever, he looks like he is playing Robin to some imaginary Batman at his side, like Jimmy Stewart and his invisible rabbit. His nasal, unobtrusive voice makes every line sound the same".^[22]

In 2007, the cast of The Good Shepherd won the Silver Bear of the prestigious Berlin International Film Festival for outstanding artistic contribution. It was the only American entry in 2007 to win a prize at the festival.^[23]

De Niro said he would like to make two sequels to The Good Shepherd, one bringing the action forward from 1961 to 1989 and the fall of the Berlin Wall, the other following its protagonist, Edward Wilson, up to the present day.^[24]

The review-tallying website Rotten Tomatoes reporting that 90 out of the 167 reviews they tallied were positive, for a score of 54% and a certification of "rotten" (according to the website's criteria).^[25] Metacritic reports the film has an aggregate metascore of 61/100 ("Generally favorable reviews").

References[link]

Bibliography[link]

• Galbraith, James K. (2000). "A Crime So Immense". Texas Observer, (C) 2000 Texas Democracy Foundation. Archived from the original on 2006-09-04. http://web.archive.org/web/2006/http://utip.gov.utexas.edu/jg/archive/2000/crimesoimmense.pdf. 

External links[link]

• Official website
• The Good Shepherd at the Internet Movie Database
• The Good Shepherd at AllRovi
• The Good Shepherd at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Good Shepherd at Metacritic
• The Good Shepherd at Box Office Mojo

The Good Shepherd, c. 300, at the Pio Cristiano Museum, Vatican

The Good Shepherd is a pericope found in John 10:1-21 in which Jesus is depicted as the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep. Similar imagery is used in Psalm 23. The Good Shepherd is revisited throughout the four Gospels in references to Jesus not letting himself lose any of his sheep.

The surrounding context of the allegorical story of the Good Shepherd (John 9:35-41 and John 10:22-30) shows that the people around Jesus realized that he was asserting that he was God. Biblical scholar Donald Guthrie maintains that the reaction of the Jews (picking up stones to stone him) shows that they understood that Jesus was asserting his own divinity. (Cf. Lev. 24:16)

Early Christian art[link]

The image of the Good Shepherd is the most common of the symbolic representations of Christ found in Early Christian art in the Catacombs of Rome, before Christian imagery could be made explicit. The form of the image showing a young man carrying a lamb round his neck was directly borrowed from the much older pagan kriophoros (see below) and in the case of portable statuettes like the most famous one now in the Pio Cristiano Museum, Vatican City (right), it is impossible to say whether the image was originally created with the intention of having a Christian significance. The image continued to be used in the centuries after Christianity was legalized in 313. Initially it was probably not understood as a portrait of Jesus, but a symbol like others used in Early Christian art,^[1] and in some cases may also have represented the Shepherd of Hermas, a popular Christian literary work of the 2nd century.^[2][3] However by about the 5th century the figure more often took on the appearance of the conventional depiction of Christ, as it had developed by this time, and was given a halo and rich robes,^[4] as on the apse mosaic in the church of Santi Cosma e Damiano in Rome, or at Ravenna (right). Images of the Good Shepherd often include a sheep on his shoulders, as in the Lukan version of the Parable of the Lost Sheep.^[5]

Biblical reference[link]

Allegory of Christ^[6] as the Good Shepherd, 3rd century.

From John 10:11-18 (WEB):

I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. He who is a hired hand, and not a shepherd, who doesn't own the sheep, sees the wolf coming, leaves the sheep, and flees. The wolf snatches the sheep, and scatters them. The hired hand flees because he is a hired hand, and doesn't care for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own, and I'm known by my own; even as the Father knows me, and I know the Father. I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep, which are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will hear my voice. They will become one flock with one shepherd. Therefore the Father loves me, because I lay down my life, that I may take it again. No one takes it away from me, but I lay it down by myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. I received this commandment from my Father.

Parable or metaphor?[link]

Several authors such as Barbara Reid, Arland Hultgren or Donald Griggs comment that "parables are noticeably absent from the Gospel of John".^[7][8][9] According to the Catholic Encyclopedia article on Parables: "There are no parables in St. John's Gospel" and according to the Encyclopædia Britannica article on Gospel of St. John: "Here Jesus' teaching contains no parables and but three allegories, the Synoptists present it as parabolic through and through." These sources all suggest that the passage is better described as a metaphor than a parable.

Pagan symbolism[link]

Late Roman marble copy of the Kriophoros of Kalamis (Museo Barracco, Rome)

In ancient Greek cult, kriophoros or criophorus (Κριοφόρος), the "ram-bearer" is a figure that commemorates the solemn sacrifice of a ram. It becomes an epithet of Hermes: Hermes Kriophoros.

In two-dimensional art, Hermes Kriophoros transformed into the Christ carrying a lamb and walking among his sheep: "Thus we find philosophers holding scrolls or a Hermes Kriophoros which can be turned into Christ giving the Law (Traditio Legis) and the Good Shepherd respectively".^[10] The Good Shepherd is a common motif from the Catacombs of Rome (Gardner, 10, fig 54) and in sarcophagus reliefs, where Christian and pagan symbolism are often combined, making secure identifications difficult.

See also[link]

• I am (biblical term)
• Depictions of Jesus
• Names and titles of Jesus in the New Testament

Gallery[link]

• 

  At the Catacomb of Priscilla, Rome

• 

  Fourth century depiction at the Museum of the Baths of Diocletian, Rome

• 

  Mausoleum of Galla Placidia at Ravenna, mosaic with an imperial Christ, ca. 440

• 

  20th century stained glass depiction, Australia

Notes[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Good shepherd

External links[link]

• Holman Bible Dictionary - "Shepherd" for other Biblical references.

v t e Parables of Jesus   Canonical / New Testament Synoptic Gospels Barren Fig Tree Budding Fig Tree Counting the cost Drawing in the Net Faithful Servant Friend at Night Good Samaritan Great Banquet Growing Seed Hidden Treasure Lamp Leaven Lost Coin Lost Sheep Master and Servant Mustard Seed New Wine into Old Wineskins Pearl Pharisee and the Publican Prodigal Son Rich Fool Rich man and Lazarus Sheep and Goats Sower Strong Man Talents or minas Tares Ten Virgins Tree and its Fruits Two Debtors Two Sons Unjust Judge Unjust Steward Unforgiving Servant Wicked Husbandmen Wise and Foolish Builders Workers in the Vineyard   Non-Canonical / Disputed Thomas Assassin Empty Jar (eleven other parables have New Testament parallels) Christianity Portal

Matt Damon
Damon in 2009
Born	Matthew Paige Damon (1970-10-08) October 8, 1970 (age 41) Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.
Alma mater	Harvard University (Dropped out)
Occupation	Actor, screenwriter, producer
Years active	1988–present
Spouse	Luciana Barroso (m. 2005–present)
Children	4
Awards	Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay

Matthew Paige "Matt" Damon (born October 8, 1970) is an American actor, screenwriter, and philanthropist whose career was launched following the success of the film Good Will Hunting (1997) from a screenplay he co-wrote with friend Ben Affleck. The pair won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and a Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay for their work. Damon alone received multiple Best Actor nominations, including an Academy Award for his lead performance in the film.

Damon has since starred in commercially successful films such as Saving Private Ryan (1998), the Ocean's trilogy, and the Bourne series, while also gaining critical acclaim for his performances in dramas such as Syriana (2005), The Good Shepherd (2006), and The Departed (2006). He garnered a Golden Globe nomination for portraying the title character in The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in Invictus (2009). He is one of the top 40 highest grossing actors of all time. In 2007, Damon received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and was named Sexiest Man Alive by People magazine. Damon has been actively involved in charitable work, including the ONE Campaign, H2O Africa Foundation, and Water.org.

Early life[link]

Matt Damon was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the son of Kent Telfer Damon, a stockbroker, and Nancy Carlsson-Paige, an early childhood education professor at Lesley University.^[1][2] Damon is of Scottish, English, Finnish, and Swedish ancestry.^[3] He has a brother, Kyle, who is an accomplished sculptor and artist.^[2][4] He and his family moved to Newton and lived there for two years. After his parents divorced, Damon and his brother moved with their mother back to Cambridge,^[2][5] where they lived in a six-family communal house.^[6][7] Damon grew up near actor Ben Affleck, a close friend since childhood and collaborator on several films. (Damon is Affleck's tenth cousin, once removed, through a common New England ancestor.)^[8] Another neighbor of Damon's was historian and author Howard Zinn,^[9] whose biographical film You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train and audio version of A People's History of the United States Damon later narrated.^[7]

Damon took to role-playing as a child partly because his mother raised him "by the book,"^[6] which made him feel as though "you couldn’t define yourself, because you already had been defined by her."^[6] He attended Cambridge Alternative School (now Graham & Parks) and then Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, where he was a disciplined student^[10] but had a "terrifying" first two years due to his short height at the time.^[11] As a lonely adolescent, Damon has described feeling "such pain in wanting to belong somewhere and not belonging."^[6] Damon performed as an actor in several high school theater productions;^[2] he has credited his drama teacher at Rindge and Latin, Gerry Speca, as an important artistic influence, even though Damon recalls that, "Mr. Speca always seemed to trust Ben [Affleck] with the biggest roles and longest speeches."^[10]

Damon attended Harvard University from 1988 to 1992 but did not graduate.^[12] While at Harvard, he studied English and lived in Lowell House. He took part in student theater,^[13] appearing in plays such as Burn This in Winthrop House and A... My Name is Alice (in one of the three male roles usually performed by women).^[14] Damon dropped out of the university to pursue his acting career in Los Angeles because he mistakenly expected Geronimo: An American Legend to become a big success.^[15] "By the time I figured out I had made the wrong decision, it was too late. I was living out here with a bunch of actors, and we were all scrambling to make ends meet," Damon has said.^[16]

Acting career[link]

Early years[link]

Damon made his film debut in 1988 when he was eighteen, with a single line of dialogue in the romantic comedy Mystic Pizza.^[17] As a student at Harvard University, he continued to pursue acting and performed small roles in projects such as the TNT original film Rising Son and the ensemble prep-school drama School Ties.^[18] In 1992, he landed a big part in Geronimo: An American Legend with Gene Hackman and Jason Patric.^[18] Four years later, he auditioned for a small role in Cutthroat Island, but was turned away.^[19] Damon next appeared as an opiate-addicted soldier in 1996's Courage Under Fire. He was required to lose 40 pounds (18 kg) in 100 days (for only two days of filming).^[20][21] After following a self-prescribed diet and fitness regimen to lose the weight, Damon was told after filming that he was fortunate his heart did not shrink. He took medication for several years afterwards to correct the stress inflicted on his adrenal gland. Courage Under Fire gained him some critical notice, as The Washington Post labeled his performance "impressive";^[22] Damon has stated that it was worthwhile to risk his health in order to properly portray his character and show the industry how committed he was to his work as an actor.^[17][21]

Breakthrough[link]

During the early 1990s, Damon and Affleck wrote a screenplay about a young math genius, which they then pitched around Hollywood for a long time. Receiving advice from director Rob Reiner, screenwriter William Goldman, and their friend writer/director Kevin Smith, the two made changes to the script.^[15] The script eventually became Good Will Hunting (1997), and received nine Academy Awards nominations, earning Damon and Affleck Oscars for Best Original Screenplay.^[23][24] Damon was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for the same film, which also netted an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for co-star Robin Williams.^[23] He and Affleck were each paid salaries of $600,000, while the film grossed over $225 million at the worldwide box office.^[25][26] The two later parodied their roles from the film in Kevin Smith's 2001 movie Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.

Also in 1997, Damon was the lead in the critically acclaimed drama The Rainmaker, where he was recognized by the Los Angeles Times as "a talented young actor on the brink of stardom."^[27] After meeting Damon on the set of Good Will Hunting, director Steven Spielberg cast Damon as the titular character in the 1998 World War II film Saving Private Ryan.^[15]

Hollywood star[link]

Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Damon, Andy García, Julia Roberts (the cast of Ocean's Eleven), with director Steven Soderbergh in December 2001

Damon has become known for choosing a wide variety of film roles,^[28] from his portrayal of Patricia Highsmith's anti-hero Tom Ripley in The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)^[17] to a fallen angel who discusses pop culture as intellectual subject matter with Affleck in Dogma (1999); from a conjoined twin in Stuck on You (2003), which got a mixed critical reception,^[29] to the low budget experimental film Gerry (2002), which he co-wrote with Casey Affleck and Gus Van Sant. Damon garnered generally positive critical reaction for his Golden Globe-nominated^[30] portrayal of Ripley, with Variety stating, "Damon outstandingly conveys his character's slide from innocent enthusiasm into cold calculation."^[31]

Damon's attempts at essaying leading characters in romantic dramas such as 2000's All the Pretty Horses and The Legend of Bagger Vance were commercially and critically unsuccessful.^[25] Variety said of his work in All the Pretty Horses: "[Damon] just doesn't quite seem like a young man who's spent his life amidst the dust and dung of a Texas cattle ranch. Nor does he strike any sparks with [Penelope] Cruz."^[32] He was similarly deemed "uncomfortable being the center" of Robert Redford's The Legend of Bagger Vance.^[33]

From 2001 to 2007, Damon gained wider international recognition as part of two major film franchises. He co-starred as thief Linus Caldwell, alongside George Clooney, Brad Pitt, and Julia Roberts, in Steven Soderbergh's 2001 remake of the Rat Pack's 1960 caper film Ocean's 11; the successful crime dramedy spawned two sequels, Ocean's Twelve (2004) and Ocean's Thirteen (2007).^[17] He played amnesiac assassin Jason Bourne in the hit action thrillers The Bourne Identity (2002), The Bourne Supremacy (2004), and The Bourne Ultimatum (2007).^[17] Entertainment Weekly placed Damon as an "action star" on its end-of-the-decade, "best-of" list, saying, "When he first signed on as the ass-kicking amnesiac Jason Bourne in 2002, no one would've predicted that Damon would become the decade's best mixer of brawn and brains. Shows what we know."^[34] In August 2007, financial magazine Forbes created a list of actors who generated the best box office performance related to their salaries; the list placed Damon as the most bankable star of the actors reviewed, revealing that Damon had averaged USD29 at the box office for every dollar he earned for his last three films.^[35][36]

Damon with Robert De Niro in Berlin in February 2007 for the premiere of The Good Shepherd

Damon played a fictionalized version of Wilhelm Grimm in Terry Gilliam's fantasy adventure The Brothers Grimm (2005), which was a critically panned commercial failure;^[25] The Washington Post concluded, "Damon, constantly flashing his newscaster's teeth and flaunting a fake, 'Masterpiece Theatre' dialect, comes across like someone who got lost on the way to an audition for a high school production of 'The Pirates of Penzance.'"^[37] Later that year, he appeared as an energy analyst in Syriana.^[38] In 2006, Damon joined Robert De Niro in The Good Shepherd as a career CIA officer, and played an undercover mobster working for the Massachusetts State Police in Martin Scorsese's The Departed, a remake of the Hong Kong police thriller Infernal Affairs.^[17] Assessing his work in the two films, Manohla Dargis of The New York Times wrote that Damon "does what few stars with his kind of billing do: he disappears."^[28] The Departed was a success amongst critics and audiences alike.^[25][39]

Damon had an uncredited cameo in Francis Ford Coppola's Youth Without Youth (2007) and another cameo in the 2008 Che Guevara biopic Che. He lent his voice to the English version of the animated film Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea, which was released in the United States in August 2009.^[40] He also made a guest appearance in 2009 on the sixth season finale of Entourage as himself, where he tries to pressure Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier) into donating to his charity OneXOne — a real foundation for which Damon is an ambassador — and gets increasingly irritated when Chase does not seem to comply.^[41][42]

Damon next appeared in Steven Soderbergh's dark comedy, The Informant! (2009),^[43] in which his Golden Globe-nominated work was described by Entertainment Weekly as such: "The star – who has quietly and steadily turned into a great Everyman actor – is in nimble control as he reveals his character's deep crazies."^[44] Also in 2009, Damon portrayed South Africa national rugby union team captain François Pienaar in the Clint Eastwood-directed film Invictus, which is based on the 2008 John Carlin book Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Changed a Nation and features Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela.^[45] Invictus earned Damon an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. The New Republic observed, "It is not a demanding role, but the ever-more-actorly Damon brings it off with low-key charm and integrity."^[46]

Handprints and footprints of Damon in front of the Grauman's Chinese Theatre

In 2010, Damon re-teamed with director Paul Greengrass, who directed him in the Bourne Supremacy and Bourne Ultimatum, for the action thriller Green Zone, which flopped commercially^[47] and received ambivalent reception from critics.^[48]

In motion pictures that feature him either as a leading actor or as a supporting co-star, his films have grossed a total of U.S.$1.94^[49] to U.S.$2.42 billion^[50] (based on counting his roles as strictly lead or including supporting roles, respectively) at the North American box office, placing him in the top forty grossing actors of all time.

He has appeared as a guest star in an episode of Arthur, titled "The Making of Arthur", as himself.^[51] During Season 5 of 30 Rock, he appeared as guest star in the role of Liz Lemon's boyfriend in the episodes "I Do I Do", "The Fabian Strategy", "Live Show", and "Double Edged Sword".

Damon's 2010 projects included Clint Eastwood's Hereafter and the Coen Brothers' remake of the 1969 John Wayne-starring Western True Grit; the latter movie started filming in March 2010 and was released in December of that year.^[52]

In 2011, he starred in The Adjustment Bureau, Contagion, and We Bought a Zoo.

Upcoming films[link]

Damon will next work with frequent collaborator Steven Soderbergh on a project as Liberace's longtime partner, Scott Thorsen, opposite Michael Douglas in an upcoming film centered on the pianist's life.^[53] He will also star in Elysium. He will shoot Promised Land, directed by Gus Van Sant, in April 2012, which he co-wrote with John Krasinski.^[54]

Producing career[link]

Along with Affleck and producers Chris Moore and Sean Bailey, Damon founded the production company LivePlanet, through which the four created the documentary series Project Greenlight to find and fund worthwhile film projects from novice filmmakers.^[55] The company produced and founded the short-lived mystery-hybrid series Push, Nevada, among other projects. Project Greenlight was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Reality Program in 2002, 2004, and 2005.^[15]

In March 2010, Damon and Affleck teamed up again to sign a first-look production deal with Warner Bros.^[56]

Humanitarian work[link]

Damon volunteering in Haiti as part of the United Nations Stabilization Mission

Damon was the founder of H2O Africa Foundation, the charitable arm of the Running the Sahara expedition,^[15][57] which merged with WaterPartners to create Water.org in July 2009.^[58] He, along with George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Don Cheadle, and Jerry Weintraub, is one of the founders of Not On Our Watch, an organization that focuses global attention and resources to stop and prevent mass atrocities such as in Darfur.^[59] Damon supports the ONE Campaign, which is aimed at fighting AIDS and poverty in Third World countries. He has appeared in their print and television advertising. Damon is also an ambassador for OneXOne, a non-profit foundation committed to supporting, preserving and improving the lives of children at home in Canada, the United States, and around the world.^[60] Damon is also a spokesperson for Feeding America, the largest USA-focused hunger-relief organization, and a member of their Entertainment Council, participating in their Ad Council PSAs.

Damon is a board member of Tonic Mailstopper (formerly GreenDimes), a company that attempts to halt junk mail delivered to American homes each day.^[61] Appearing on The Oprah Winfrey Show on April 20, 2007, Damon promoted the organization's efforts to prevent the trees used for junk mail letters and envelopes from being chopped down. Damon stated: "For an estimated dime a day they can stop 70 percent of the junk mail that comes to your house. It's very simple, easy to do, great gift to give, I've actually signed up my entire family. It was a gift given to me this past holiday season and I was so impressed that I'm now on the board of the company."^[62]

In 2011, the documentary which he narrated, American Teacher, opened in New York prior to national screening.^[63]

In the media[link]

Kimmel and Damon[link]

Comedian Jimmy Kimmel at some point started stating near the end of his ABC television show Jimmy Kimmel Live!, "My apologies to Matt Damon; we ran out of time." The line is a gag lampooning instances where shows cannot feature their last guest due to time constraints. On September 12, 2006, after a segment highlighting the running gag and a lengthy introduction by Kimmel, Damon finally appeared on the show, only for Kimmel to apologetically cut his interview and head to credits, as Damon cursed him. This encounter was entirely planned by Kimmel and Damon.^[64]

Kimmel's girlfriend at the time, comedian Sarah Silverman, appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live on January 31, 2008 and aired a clip where she is singing a song entitled "I'm Fucking Matt Damon." Damon appeared in the song with Silverman.^[65] Kimmel responded by airing his own music video in which he announced, through song, that he is "fucking Ben Affleck." The video aired on February 24, 2008, and featured Affleck along with a host of celebrities, including Don Cheadle, Brad Pitt, Cameron Diaz, Harrison Ford, and Robin Williams.

Later on, Kimmel's sidekick, Guillermo, appeared in a spoof of The Bourne Ultimatum, which starred Damon. He was then chased down by Damon as he cursed about Kimmel being behind all this.

The most recent encounter was titled "The Handsome Men's Club" which featured Kimmel, along with other "Handsome Men" including Matthew McConaughey, Rob Lowe and Lenny Kravitz. At the end of the skit Kimmel has a door slammed in his face by Damon stating that they had run out of time and then Damon continues with a sinister laugh.^[66]

Political views[link]

Damon appeared on Hardball with Chris Matthews in December 2006 and, while discussing the ongoing war in Iraq, he stated: "It seems like we have a fighting class in our country that's comprised of people who have to go for financial reasons... I don't think that that is fair. If you're gonna send people to war... then that needs to be shared by everybody, you know, and if the president has daughters who are of age then maybe they should go too."^[67]

On September 10, 2008, a video was released on YouTube by the Associated Press in which Damon commented on the Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin, whom he viewed unready to lead the country in case John McCain were to not make it through his first term. Damon referred to Palin as a "...bad Disney movie... 'I'm just a hockey mom from Alaska here to take on the White House,'" and added, "It's absurd ... I need to know if she really thinks dinosaurs were here 4,000 years ago. Because she’s gonna have the nuclear codes."^[68]

Damon narrated the audiobook version of historian Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, published in 2003.^[69] Zinn had been his next-door neighbor growing up in Cambridge.

Advertizing[link]

In January 2012 it was announced that Damon had signed a multi-year deal to be the voice of TD Ameritrade advertisements, replacing Sam Waterston as the discount brokerage's spokesman. Damon provides all fees from the advertisements to charity.^[70]

Personal life[link]

Damon with wife Luciana Bozán Barroso at the 2009 Venice International Film Festival

Damon dated his Good Will Hunting co-star Minnie Driver.^[71] He later had a two-year relationship with actress Winona Ryder.^[17] From 2001 to 2003, he dated Odessa Whitmire, a former personal assistant of Billy Bob Thornton and Ben Affleck.^[17] While filming Stuck on You in 2003,^[72] Damon met Argentine-born Luciana Bozán Barroso (born 1976) in Miami, where she was working as a bartender.^[73] They married in a private civil ceremony on December 9, 2005, at the Manhattan Marriage Bureau near New York City Hall.^[73] Damon became stepfather to Barroso's young daughter, Alexia, from her previous marriage. The couple's first child together, daughter Isabella, was born on June 11, 2006.^[74] On August 20, 2008, Barroso gave birth to the couple's second child, Gia Zavala Damon, both girls born in Miami, Florida.^[75] On October 20, 2010, Barroso gave birth to their third daughter, Stella Zavala Damon, in New York.^[76] As of 2011, Damon and his family reside in Manhattan.^[56]

Damon is a fan of the Boston Red Sox.^[77] After the team won the 2007 World Series, he narrated the commemorative DVD release of the event.^[78]

Damon enjoys playing poker and has competed in several World Series of Poker (WSOP) events^[79][80] including the 2010 World Series of Poker main event.^[81] He dropped $25,000 at the WSOP while researching his role as a professional poker player in Rounders (1998)^[82] and after filming the movie Damon was busted out of the 1998 WSOP by poker professional Doyle Brunson.^[83]

Awards and honors[link]

Matt Damon's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame

• Damon won multiple awards for Good Will Hunting, a film he co-wrote with Ben Affleck. He was nominated for the Academy Award as "Best Actor in a Leading Role" and won for "Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen".^[23][24]
• On July 25, 2007, Damon became the 2,343rd person to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.^[84] He reacted to the award by stating: "A few times in my life I've had these experiences that are just kind of too big to process and this looks like it's going to be one of those times."^[85]
• Damon has been nominated for four Screen Actors Guild awards and seven MTV Movie Awards for various films. Additionally, he has three Emmy nominations for his work as producer on three seasons of Project Greenlight.^[86]
• Damon was named People magazine's Sexiest Man Alive for 2007.^[87]
• Damon won 'Best Ass-Kicker' and 'Guy of the Year' at the Spike Guys' Choice Awards of 2008.^[88]
• On March 27, 2010, Damon received the 24th Annual American Cinematheque Award, which was presented to him by Ben Affleck at a ceremony comprising roasts from Damon's colleagues and friends in the entertainment industry.^[89]

Filmography[link]

References[link]