Matt Damon: Youre a better actor the less people know about you
Matt Damon has several interviews to promote The Martian, which is out this week. One of most extensive profiles is in The Guardian, which I’m excerpting below. Damon makes some clever wisecracks, but other than that he says pretty much the same thing he’s said for years about his relationship with fame. In fact in his interview with The Guardian, Damon made many of the same points as he did in his 2013 Esquire cover interview: that the world changes its relationship to you when you become famous but that you don’t necessarily change, and that he cultivates a boring persona which makes him uninteresting to tabloids and the paparazzi. Here are some quotes from The Guardian, and there’s much more at the source:
On being dull
I think people just leave a room I’m in and they’re like: Well that guy wasn’t a movie star.
On the paparazzi leaving him and his family alone
You know, a guy who’s married happily with four kids is not quite a story. And so they’ll come back and they’ll take an occasional picture… but it’s kind of just updating the file.
On winning an Oscar at 27
It was a really joyful experience. You wake up one morning and the world is entirely the same and you know, actually, all the things that mattered yesterday are the same today, except the world is forever going to be a totally different place for you.
On fame
That’s the mind-f*ck and it takes a few years to even get your head around what’s happening… I remember my brother said: ‘How are you doing?’ And I was, like, ‘I’m the f*cking same, but everyone else is different.’
On if he would let Ben Affleck direct him
Sure, if the right thing came along. I mean, he usually gives himself the main role in the thing he’s directing, so it would need to probably be a two-hander.
On Robin Williams’s suicide
Peter Farrelly, who is a friend of mine, the director, he was talking about suicide and he said something really lovely, which was: ‘Whenever that happens to a friend of mine [suicide], I feel like they’re just in a house on fire and they have to get out.’ I hoped that it [Williams’s death] could lead to a wider discussion about mental health because if somebody that incredible and wonderful – just such a light – could be living with that, hopefully it could give other people permission to talk about this to people around them. So that at least something positive came out of something so horrible.
On if it’s harder for actors to be openly gay
I’m sure. When Ben and I first came on the scene there were rumours that we were gay because it was two guys who wrote a script together.
I know. It’s just like any piece of gossip… and it put us in a weird position of having to answer, you know what I mean? Which was then really deeply offensive. I don’t want to, like [imply] it’s some sort of disease – then it’s like I’m throwing my friends under the bus. But at the time, I remember thinking and saying, Rupert Everett was openly gay and this guy – more handsome than anybody, a classically trained actor – it’s tough to make the argument that he didn’t take a hit for being out.
On remaining mysterious as an actor
I think it must be really hard for actors to be out publicly. But in terms of actors, I think you’re a better actor the less people know about you period. And sexuality is a huge part of that. Whether you’re straight or gay, people shouldn’t know anything about your sexuality because that’s one of the mysteries that you should be able to play.
Is this true? Is Damon just a boring family man or does he control his image slavishly to the point where that’s the only thing he lets slip through? He does seem happily married, and he’s always gushed about his wife and kids. Incidentally, Damon has a new interview with USA Today where he does reveal some scant personal information. He says that his oldest daughter “just got her [driver’s] license yesterday” and revealed that he taught her to drive. Other than that the interview is focused on Damon’s career and his role in The Martian. He humble brags a little about memorizing the entire script before showing up on set, impressing director Ridley Scott. There’s also talk of an Oscar nomination for Damon.
Damon also did a Graham Norton interview with his costar, Jessica Chastain. Norton read some tweets about the ponytail Damon was sporting for The Great Wall. Damon revealed that the hair was made up of 6,0000 extensions. My favorite tweet: “Matt Damon I will use your ponytail to steer while you dine upon my lady sandwich.” Chastain was dying over that one.
Damon talked to Norton about winning an Oscar at 27. He got choked up explaining how that award changed his perspective at such a young age. “I literally looked at it… and I said to myself ‘Thank God I didn’t f*k anyone over for this…’ imagine chasing that and not getting it [until you’re at the end of your life] and imagining ‘what an unbelievable waste.’ If that’s a hole that you have that [Oscar] won’t fill it. My heart broke for a second.” I’m just a wee bit skeptical of this story, given Damon’s recent history with the press. He always tells the same stories and we’ve never heard this one before.
photo credit: WENN.com and FameFlynet
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