Matt Damon

[danadel]

Wasn't the whole breaking up with Minnie on Oprah just a story her camp put out for publicity? I thought he's said that they had broken up before that.

[Deleted]

It was. Minnie even admitted it a few years ago.

[spenner]

Phew! Good to know.

What are the other reasons that people hate him? I've seen comments of his interpreted very harshly on these boards. What's so bad about him?

[Auroranorth]

This may be part of it.

"There are times I've been rejected that would spin your head around," says Damon. "You wouldn't believe I sat there and let people say stuff like that to me." Before The Rainmaker and Good Will Hunting--the one-two punch that threw him into the spotlight and led to six more back-to-back roles, including his latest, in The Talented Mr. Ripley--Damon struggled for seven years to get enough work to feed himself. But tough as those years were, they are eclipsed in his memory by an experience he had when he was nine or 10. "I moved to a neighboring city, and I really wanted to go back to my old school and see my friends," says Damon. "And my mother came up with this idea: 'Well, why don't you go back and spend a day there?'" But when she called and asked whether her son could return to say goodbye and achieve some closure, the principal said no. "I couldn't understand it," says Damon, his indignation still palpable. "The feeling of rejection was so deep." His mother, a professor of early-childhood education, wrote a stinging letter to the principal, which the young Damon carried around for weeks. "I remember thinking, 'Someday this person will be in a position of needing something from me,'" he says.

He's 29 and whining about not being allowed to go spend a day at the school he was no longer attending. When he was nine or 10. Dude, grow up and stick a pin in your ego.

[jynni]

I'm not quite sure what the issue is with that and I'm not so sure he's really whining rather than relating a story about a time when he was dissapointed by something as a child. Are celebrities not allowed to talk about bad childhood experiences?

[incognito]

Sure they're allowed, but it starts sounding pathetic when they act pissed off about it all these years later. Especially when it's over something relatively trivial (i.e. it's not like Matt's relating some horrific child abuse story) that -- provided you're already psychologically healthy -- shouldn't be that traumatizing.

[Deleted]

Man, it still sounds like he was upset by that. The principal was just doing his job. Have some perspective, you don't always get your way in life, Matt.

I don't find him attractive. he seems like a nice, normal guy, but he has said some pretty stupid things before that just keep me from liking him.

[nycspendaholic]

"The feeling of rejection was so deep. I remember thinking, 'Someday this person will be in a position of needing something from me,'" he says.

I'm sorry, dude, but that sounds so over the top. All that's missing is him standing on a cliff shaking his fist, the wind carrying his words into the canyon creating an ominous echo.

He was 9. Not negating it. It was normal to have been upset as a child. And frankly I think it was really that fair - but I don't know the circumstances and why Headmaster Evil wouldn't let him come back to school for a day. But he makes it sound like until the day he dies he's just waiting for that phone to ring and his grade school principal to be on the other end asking a huge favor of him that only he can deliver so he can finally at long last laugh that long bitter bitter laugh down the receiver and hang up... and he rehearses this scenario in his mind every night before he rests his head to sleep. LOL!

I think it's more funny than something to dislike him for, but hey.

[Deleted]

I don't know, I have to cut him some slack because there are things that people did or said to me as a kid that still piss me off.

[Deleted]

People magazine's 2007 sexiest man alive.[/color]