He garnered a Golden Globe nomination for portraying the title character in The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in Invictus (2009). in 2007, Damon received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and was named Sexiest Man Alive by People magazine. Damon is of Scottish, English, Finnish, and Swedish ancestry, and is a distant cousin of actors Ben Affleck and Casey Affleck. Damon took to role-playing as a child partly because his mother raised him “by the book,” which made him feel as though “you couldn’t define yourself, because you already had been defined by her.” He attended Cambridge Alternative School (now Graham & Parks) and then Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, where he was a disciplined student but had a “terrifying” first two years due to his short height at the time.
