I’ve loved Matt Damon ever since I got to interview him my sophomore year of college. It was my first actor interview (for my college paper) and I was a bit nervous. The interview ended up being a larger round table interview with a bunch of critics and writers, which somehow made me more nervous as I was not known by any of them. We all sad down and the publicist started going around introducing everyone to Matt Damon. Everything is went well until she got to me, she easily gets out my first name but started to falter when she tried to say my last name.

I think that she simply didn’t know it, but I thought I’d let her off the hook, so I said, “no worries, everyone gets it wrong, it’s Telaroli.” To which Matt Damon said - “Telaroli?”. And I said in return, “Yep, Telaroli.”

Matt Damon. (Credit WENN)

The woman then finished introducing everyone and one of the cheeky writers turned to Matt Damon when she was done and said “you know there’s going to be a quiz now.” To which Matt Damon simply said, “well all I’d be able to remember is Telaroli.”

How could you not love the guy after that?

And now, beyond all the good films he’s made in the past 7 years, I have another reason to love Matt Damon, his work with AIDS in Africa.

In 2006, Matt Damon found himself in Zambia with DATA (Debt AIDS Trade Africa), Bono’s organization. He wanted to use his fame to help the world in some way:

Celebrity, he says, is “a tricky thing to navigate. There’s no real pretty way to do it.” He is also acutely aware of the power and the pitfalls of fame when it comes to shining light on international issues. Damon has wrestled with everything from not wanting to be used for the wrong causes to the fear of coming across as dumb. “For a lot of actors, our biggest fear is that we’re going to start talking about things we don’t fully understand and sound like idiots,” he says. “In the long run, I’ll do much more good if, when I open my mouth, I have something worth saying.”

And so Damon set out to educate himself, traveling to South Africa and Zambia in April 2006. As a subject, poverty and Africa “seemed daunting, and there’s so much to learn,” he tells me. “You have to give yourself permission to not know. It’s a long process.” [CN Traveler]

His travels inspired him to start up H2O Africa Foundation and to partner with pal Jeffrey Sachs. H2O provides water and sanitation education, along with delivering funds for water wells. He’s also worked with pals George Clooney and Don Cheadle on Not On Our Watch, an organization working to stop the genocide in Darfur.

More than lend his name and time to various groups, Damon also knows his stuff when it comes to the issues he is involved in. takepart to learn more about his work and from his experience.

Also read on:

• Not On Brad Pitt and George Clooney’s Watch
• Matt Damon wraps ‘Informant’, clean water for Africa
• Matt Damon Breaks Stuff - For Darfur of Course

Also, because I still find it funny: