5 min readNew YorkJul 2, 2026 08:08 PM IST
First published on: Jul 2, 2026 at 11:25 AM IST
Scrawled in block letters on an off-white obscure wall in Harvard Square in Boston is a line: “Matt Damon was here!” Excited passersby stop, howl and snap photographs and selfies from various angles, as though they had discovered a hidden treasure. “Seriously, was he really here?” “Or someone wrote just like?” Then who did? Was it Damon himself?
Like urban myths, there are various versions. Some claim Damon, who was raised in the locale, himself wrote it. Some, in typical Bostonian wryness, would ask: “Who is Matt Damon?” A photographer turned portrait artist, chimes in: “Well if you ask me, he is here and everywhere.” “I am not that Hollywood-loving type, but a lot of people ask me about Matt’s favourite restaurant or bar, or the cinema,” he says.
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Damon’s mother was a professor at Cambridge, less than a mile away from Harvard. So he grew up walking under the luxuriant foliage watching giant squirrels wiggling along the grassy tapestries and the Neo-Georgian buildings that dot its avenues.
In 1988, he enrolled at Harvard for an English major and left the institution, just 12 credits short of completing his degree to pursue acting. But before he left, he had scripted the first act of the movie that catapulted him to fame and hoarded academy awards, Good Will Hunting. In a lecture at Harvard in 2013, he recollected it: “I left with this document under my arm—this first 40 pages of a screenplay.” “He [professor Anthony Kubiak] gave me a straight A and wrote on the script, ‘Don’t give up on this. Wherever this goes, it’s going somewhere. Stick with this”.”
It was not until 1994 that he completed the script, about a shy janitor who is a mathematical genius, with his close friend and actor Ben Affleck, also from Cambridge. Naturally, a lot of the background is Boston and Harvard Square. The elderly shopkeeper Antoine of the Hidden Treasures souvenirs, says curious tourists ask him whether he has seen Damon. “I tell them I have, and it could be true because I have seen thousands of kids here. But I don’t remember their names, or faces. After he became famous, I can well say I have seen him. In an interview I noticed that he still retains the Boston accent,” he says. With a guffaw he adds: “Good Will Hunting is not my favourite Damon movie. It’s The Departed (some parts were shot in Boston), and I am not saying this because I am Italian (director Martin Scorsese and co-lead Leonardo Di Caprio are of Italian descent) .”
Movie buffs scour the locale for Damon collectibles, a tale, or just stroll along. They search for the Bow and Arrow Pub in Harvard Square, where Will (Damon) meets Skyler (Minnie Driver). Beside the storefront, he delivers the movie’s most famous line to his friend Chuckie (Ben Affleck): Do you like apples? Well, I got her number. How do you like them apples (originally a line borrowed from Jack Nicholson’s China Town)?” Alas, Antoine says, the pub was shut down a while ago. “It’s now Grafton Street, and they have redone the whole place. A lot of tourists come here asking for the Bows, shouting those apple lines,” he says.
But the L Street Tavern in the Southie neighbourhood where Will frequented is still preserved. The park bench where Will and his professor Sean Maguire, enacted by Robin Williams, in Boston Public Garden, has a cult following by itself. It soon earned the name, The Goodwill Hunting Bench, too. The day Williams died, in 2014, fans of the movie lit candles and put flowers on it. Movie quotes and messages are inscribed on its side.
Hollywood pilgrims visit the famous cafe Au Bon Pain at Harvard Square too. Says Sarah, manning the cash: “It’s kind of a tourist destination, people from every country have come here and asked, ‘Is it where Good Will Hunting was shot?’ And they are super excited.”
In 2013, he returned to Harvard to receive the Harvard Artist Medal. At the end of the speech, he said emotionally. “Of all the accolades or movies, when anybody says my name, they say the name of this University, too, and that means a lot to me. I’ve always tried to live my life in a way that deserved the description of being a Harvard person.” As the scrawling goes: “Matt Damon was here!” But who drew it, no one knows. “Perhaps it was Matt himself,” says the portrait artist, chuckling.
Movie buffs scour Harvard Squad for Damon collectibles, a tale, or just stroll along. (Miramax Films/Express Photo by Sandip G) 
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