Matt Damon can currently do no wrong on the big screen, his last role in Invictus earnt him a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination, and he is one of the biggest names in Hollywood.
He is back on the big screen this week as he reunites with Paul Greengrass to return to the war movie genre in Green Zone.
But it has taken many years of hard graft, and sometimes really rubbish roles, for the actor to find himself where he is today.
Damon shot to fame in 1997, along with his best mate Ben Affleck, as they penned and starred in Good Will Hunting. They went on to win a Best Screenplay Oscar for their work and Damon was also nominated for Best Actor.
And while Affleck's career took off Damon did get somewhat left behind as his success was steady rather than instant.
By the late nineties Damon was best known for roles in Saving Private Ryan and The Talented Mr. Ripley, the latter for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe.
Into the noughties and roles in Dogma and The Legend of Bagger Vance followed but it wasn't long before his fortunes were about to change, and it was all thanks to a certain franchise.
Yes it's amazing what a franchise does for a career! And first up was Ocean's Eleven, probably just planned as a single movie, which teamed him up with Hollywood heavy weights George Clooney and Brad Pitt.
A re-make of the 1060 Rat Pack movie Ocean's Eleven was a huge critical and commercial hit and Damon would return to the role of Linus twice more as the franchise enjoyed varying degrees of success.
But it would be the role of amnesiac Jason Bourne that really kicked stared his career back in 2002.
The spy film, an adaptation of the Robert Ludlum novel of the same name, was directed by Doug Liman and the script penned by Tony Gilroy.
The Bourne Identity was well met by the critics and it went on to gross over $214 million at the global box office, a cinema icon had been born.
With very little success at after that, how awful was Ocean's Twelve? He returned to the role of Bourne in 2004 as Paul Greengrass took over the reigns of the project.
Tony Gilroy was back to pen the script and Doug Liman was still on board as producer and the movie did better than it's predecessor at the box office.
With The Bourne Supremacy Damon proved that he was a top quality leading man and the roles that he was offered began to change.
He teamed up with Clooney once again for political thriller Syriana before moving onto the Robert De Niro directed picture The Good Shepherd.
It was a change of pace again in 2006 as he took on the crime film as he joined an impressive line-up for Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Wahlberg, Martin Sheen, Jack Nicholson and Alec Baldwin for Martin Scorsese's The Departed.
The movie was a critical and commercial hit as it went on win the Best Picture Oscar and bag Scorsese his first Best Director Academy Award.
A second Bourne movie with filmmaker Greengrass, The Bourne Ultimatum, cemented Damon as a real action hero as it was the best movie of the franchise.
As sequels go it's fair to say that the first is always the best and it goes steadily downhill from there. But with The Bourne Ultimatum this is trend is well and truly broken.
Ultimatum is not a mindless sequel it's an intelligent, fast paced blockbuster making Bourne one the most consistent franchises, producing three high quality movies.
Together Damon and Greengrass produced one of the best action movies to have ever graced the big screen and Damon was now a bona fide leading man.
And with a great movie came great reviews and, not surprisingly, it was the most successful movie of the franchise at the box office as it grossed $442 million worldwide.
While there has been talk of a fourth film will we see Damon take on the role of Bourne again?
Since then Damon's career has soared as he has mixed and matched his roles going on to appear in Steven Soderbergh's dark comedy The Informant before teaming up with Clint Eastwood for Invictus.
The Informant bagged him a Golden Globe nomination while Invictus saw him nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar.
He is working with Paul Greengrass once again this week for war movie Green Zone. Damon takes on the role of Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller who, after discovering covert and faulty intelligence, goes rogue to hunt for Weapons of Mass Destruction in an unstable region.
And while the actor has expressed his desire to move into directing that is going to have to wait as the roles have just poured in.
On the horizon is movie Margaret, which sees him work alongside Anna Paquin before moving onto The Adjustment Bureau with Emily Blunt.
Also due out this year is Hereafter, which sees Damon work with Clint Eastwood once again. The movie is supernatural thriller centred on three people; a blue-collar American, a French journalist and a London school boy, who are touched by death in different ways.
Green Zone is released 10th March
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw
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