All About Matt Damon’s Brother, Kyle Damon

Matt Damon and his older brother, Kyle Damon, have a special bond that they have nurtured over the years.

Kent Damon, a stockbroker, and mom Nancy Damon, a former early childhood education teacher, welcomed Kyle in the late 60s and Matt in 1970 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The family briefly moved near Newton, although Matt and Kyle’s parents divorced in 1972.

After their parents separated, the boys and their mom ended up living in a “hippie commune” of six families in a “really urban part of Cambridge,” Kyle recalled. Art Works magazine in 2020

The two helped his mom fix up the house, and that was the beginning of Kyle’s discovery of a love for mixed media art—even though the repetitive work wasn’t Matt’s favorite. And even though it wasn’t a typical upbringing, it helped both of them find their passions in life.

“Over the years I’ve been doing art, I’ve been building things and Matt has been taking on characters,” Kyle said. “We didn’t grow up with anything, but we didn’t know any better. We were happy.”

Here’s what you need to know about Matt Damon’s brother — Kyle Damon — and his relationship with the actor.

He is a mixed media artist

Although now a mixed media artist, Kyle originally began as a printmaker while studying at the University of Massachusetts Amherst for two years, before moving on to Tufts’ Museum of Fine Art. He turned to mixed media when he found himself in school and without money.

“I lived in the warehouse district, and all that crap was in the back alley. I would find old product pallets, take them apart, reassemble them and screw them back together and paint on them,” he told Art works.

He has now built a full career in art, which he still does in Cambridge with his family in a studio next to his house. In 2020, he had an art series about the American flag, for which he painted sculptural pieces with the stars and stripes.

He inspired the scene in Good Will Hunting

Matt Damon stars in ‘Good Will Hunting’.

Miramax/Kobal/Shutterstock

One of the most picturesque scenes in Good Will Hunting — the film that put Matt on the map and earned him his first Oscar — was inspired by something that happened to Kyle.

According to Matt, who told the story while giving a 2016 commencement speech at MIT, Kyle was visiting a physicist friend at the school when he was walking down the famous “Infinity Corridor,” a long corridor that connects the two halves of the campus, and saw the panels lining the halls .

“So my brother, who is an artist, took a piece of chalk and wrote an incredibly elaborate, completely fake version of the equation. And it was so cool and completely insane that no one deleted it for months. This is a true story, Matt said vanity fair.

This inspired a key scene in the film in which Matt’s character Will, who works as a janitor at MIT, anonymously solves an impossible equation written on one of the whiteboards while cleaning up after hours.

He met his wife when she asked for one of his pictures

Matt Damon’s brother, Kyle Damon, and wife Lori in their kitchen.

Tom Herde/The Boston Globe/Getty

Kyle’s art was on display in a gallery when Lori, his wife-to-be, inquired about purchasing one of his paintings. Unfortunately, he had already sold her — but he jumped at the chance to see her again.

“It was the only one I ever sold,” Kyle said Art works. “I have to say, ‘I’m sorry one’s sold, but I’ve got others if you want to come to the studio,’ hoping that will impress her.”

The couple began dating, and two years later, Kyle asked Lori to marry him with an elaborate proposal at an art gallery.

He transformed by becoming a dad

A few years after Kyle married Lori, the two became parents to a son, Jackson. Becoming a father changed everything for him, because he immediately realized that he had to slow down. They would later welcome a second son.

“Before kids, Lori and I worked all the time. I was active, but as soon as we had kids, there was this instant transformation,” Kyle recalled. “I remember lying there, holding Jackson on my chest and feeling like I was in the right place. I just have to take care of this little guy.”

“It changed the intensity of my work. I still love to create art and I’m passionate about it, but all that energy and what it means to contribute to the world has been passed on to my children. Family is everything,” he added.

Matt and Kyle laughed with their late dad in his final moments

Kyle Damon, Kent Damon and Matt Damon at the Miramax Pre-Oscar Party on March 22, 1998.

Bei/Shutterstock

Matt and Kyle’s dad Kent passed away in 2017 from cancer. Matt recently opened up about the last moments the brothers spent with their dad – and Kent’s prank that had them in good spirits.

In the interview for promotion in July 2023 OppenheimerMatt recalled how the three of them loved the 1986 comedy Three Amigos. They particularly liked one line, where Steve Martin gets shot and the other characters, played by Chevy Chase and Martin Short, all think it’s fake.

“[Steve’s character] he realized those thugs were going to kill him, he went back to the other guys and said, ‘That’s right,'” Matt explained New York liveimitating the serious but funny tone of the sentence.

“My father, in 2017 when he was dying … we were sitting there and he just turned to me and said, ‘Matthew.’ And I say ‘Yes?’ And he says ‘That’s right,’” Matt said.

“Both my brother and I laughed with him, and we cry, but we laugh,” he explained.

Matt and Kyle rode a grueling tandem bike race together

Matt Damon and his brother Kyle Damon take part in the 2009 Cape Argus Cycling Tour on March 8, 2009 in Cape Town, South Africa.

BEELD/Gallo Images/Getty

Kyle and his family often visit Matt on the set of his films, traveling to international locations such as South Africa, where he shot the 2009 film. Invictus.

When Kyle realized that he would be visiting at the same time as a famous cycling race — the Cape Town Cycle Tour — he convinced his brother to finally do the race with him, even though the actual ride wouldn’t be so easy. The weather conditions on the day of the race were bad, and the brothers went through a crazy ride, physically and mentally.

“We were blown all over the road. The guy in front of us was carried dangerously close to the cliff. I’ve been trying to get my brother to do these things for years and now I’m like, ‘This is bullshit. I put it on the bike once and it was horrible,’ Kyle said Art works.

The 70-mile race is ridden on a tandem bicycle through South Africa’s capital. While Kyle is used to racing — he’s done several Ironman triathlons — his brother “never pushed his physical self to this extreme,” he explained.

Nevertheless, the brothers went the whole way and celebrated together at the finish line. “It was honestly difficult. It was emotional when we finished,” Kyle said. “It was epic.”

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Source: HIS Education