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Sat 17 October 2026 21:18, UK
Winning an Academy Award is the pinnacle of any actor or filmmaker’s career, but even though he’s already got one taking pride of place in his trophy cabinet, Matt Damon was adamant that he was the victim of an egregious snub when one of his performances didn’t even get a nomination.
He’s allowed to think that, even though there’s obviously plenty of bias in a performer singling out one of their own turns as being an oversight on the Academy’s part, but there’s at least one Hollywood heavyweight who would absolutely agree that his name should have been among the five contenders.
Of course, Damon didn’t waste any time in racing to the crowning achievement of his professional life, winning his only Oscar at the first time of asking. Yes, he came up empty-handed when As Good As It Gets‘ Jack Nicholson beat him to ‘Best Actor’, but by the time the icon claimed his third statue, Good Will Hunting‘s Bostonian BFFs had already accepted their ‘Best Original Screenplay’ prize.
Since then, he hasn’t troubled the ceremony too often. He was nominated for ‘Best Supporting Actor’ in Clint Eastwood’s Invictus, but nobody else stood a chance against Inglourious Basterds‘ Christoph Waltz, and the same can be said of his ‘Best Actor’-nominated outing in Ridley Scott’s The Martian, because nobody else other than The Revenant‘s Leonardo DiCaprio was taking home the performative bacon.
His role as the producer of Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester by the Sea, a movie on which he had final cut for some reason, also netted him a ‘Best Picture’ nod, but nobody remembers that because the Moonlight/La La Land fiasco was the only talking point about that year’s race for the most prestigious accolade.
Not to sound too harsh, but apart from the Oscar he won for Good Will Hunting, Damon didn’t stand a chance at winning any of the others, so he shouldn’t be too disheartened. Will he be the front-runner for his performance in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey? Perhaps, but it’s far too early to tell, and there’s a high chance that Tom Cruise will be the odds-on favourite for Alejandro G Iñárritu’s next effort, should it live up to expectations.
However, back when he was still a jobbing up-and-comer, before Good Will Hunting and Saving Private Ryan, and even before The Talented Mr Ripley, a relatively unknown Damon gave a performance that made the most of its limited minutes to such an extent that Denzel Washington was completely blown away, and he maintained that his brief contributions as Andrew Ilario may have been overlooked.
Further reading: Cutting Room Floor
“Actually, I think my performance in Courage Under Fire was worth at least an Oscar nomination,” he told Wild About Movies, reflecting on why he’s never felt the need to chase blatant awards bait. “But you don’t make movies thinking you’re going to get a nomination or win an award. You make them based on your intuition. Is the movie a quality picture on the page? Do you think it’s going to transfer well to the screen?”
Not only did he not get a nomination for his efforts, but when the movie was released, and he discovered that he wasn’t being singled out for the special praise he was utterly convinced that he deserved, Damon was so distraught that he was ready to give up acting altogether, and the whole thing sounds like a bit of a hissy fit, really.
After all, it was Courage Under Fire that got him on Steven Spielberg’s radar and ultimately landed him the title role in Saving Private Ryan, so it’s not as if it was all for nothing. Any actor who thinks they deserve an Oscar nod faces more than a 50/50 chance of being left disappointed, and as good as he was, the short-term pain, personally and professionally, was more than worth it in the long run.
He definitely suffered for his art, losing so much weight that it took him years to recover, but did he deserve to replace either Jerry Maguire‘s Cuba Gooding Jr, Fargo‘s William H Macy, Primal Fear‘s Edward Norton, Ghosts of Mississippi‘s James Woods, or Shine‘s Armin Mueller-Stahl among the five? You know what, maybe, and Damon would probably kick Norton out of the running since he auditioned for that part and didn’t get it.
