Actor: Matt Damon

Matt Damon won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay with Ben Affleck for Good Will Hunting at twenty-seven, before establishing himself as an actor, which is an unusual order.

The persona is unremarkable competence, which sounds like faint praise and is the reason the Bourne films work. Jason Bourne is frightening because he looks like nobody.

The Talented Mr Ripley is the best performance, playing a man with no self who assembles one from other people, and The Martian carries an entire film on likeability and problem-solving.

He has worked repeatedly with Soderbergh, Scorsese and Ridley Scott, and produces through the company he founded with Affleck.