Award winning actor, writer and all around good guy Matt Damon turns 43 today. Damon shares his birthday with am impressive list of Hollywood royalty, Chevy Chase (70), Sigourney Weaver (64), Darrell Hammond (58) and some of the younger generation, Bruno Mars (28), Angus T. Jones (20).

For those of us who remember Damon playing the bad guy in School Ties (1992) it is hard to believe that it’s over 20 years later and the Boston, Mass, native is now the elder statesman for up-and-comers. Recently, Cillian Murphy referenced Damon as a role model, “I admire people like Matt Damon—he just continues to do brilliant work and that’s it. That’s the model I’d like to follow.” Ok, well Murphy is only six-years junior to Damon, but you get the idea.

The Academy Award winner was seen doing some good last week. He took a moment to introduce Professor Diane Ravitch, a friend of his mother’s, for her speech during the Education on the Edge speaker series at California State University Northridge. Damon said of Ravitch, “She’s America’s foremost historian in the areas of education policy, she’s a champion of public education, she’s a courageous speaker and she’s a truth-teller.”

Dean of the school’s college of education, Michael Spagna, considered the appearance of the celebrated actor opportune for education, “I think if we can transfer some of that cultural appreciation that we have for actors like Matt Damon to teachers, we’ve done a great thing…”

Damon is keeping a hefty filming schedule through the end of the year, with Elysium having just released in August (US release) the actor has three other films in the works. The Zero Theorem will be released at the Venice Film Festival in December. The film is directed by visionary, Terry Gilliam, who posts on the official Facebook page that Matt and British actor Ben Wishaw will share the same part, “since work for film actors is very slow these days.” That’s Wishaw superimposed on Damon’s face.

In post-production, The Monuments Men re-teams Damon with George Clooney (director, co-writer and star) and will be released in December. The story is set during World War II and follows a crew of art historians and museum curators around the battlefields while they protect works of art from destruction.

Finally, Damon is filming Interstellar, which will not premiere until November 2014.

[Image via Zero Theorem and Sony Pictures Facebook.]