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Matt Damon Interview
Matt suffers for his art
Hollywood stars tend to be regarded as a fairly pampered lot but actor Matt Damon has certainly suffered for his art over the years.
He showed his determination early on in his career when he crash dieted to lose 45lbs for the modest role of a heroin addicted soldier in Courage Under Fire. In doing so he inadvertently induced a gland disorder.
And, for his latest role as a golf champion in The Legend Of Bagger Vance, he worked so hard at learning the game from scratch that he cracked a rib.
Now in France, filming the thriller The Bourne Identity, the 30-year-old actor has had to train for three months in martial arts and weapon handling.
"I like that mentality when you have to go to great lengths as an actor to make sure the show really does go on," he says.
He still winces at the memory of his rib injury which made it doubly difficult to develop a good swing for The Legend Of Bagger Vance. In the film, which is directed by Robert Redford, Damon plays a First World War veteran and former golfing star who seeks to recapture his success in competition. Will Smith plays his caddy Bagger Vance.
After sustaining the injury, Damon was in agony every time he swung a club while shooting the golf sequences in Savannah, Georgia. Even off camera he'd be writhing in pain, he recalls.
It was his determination to master a convincing golf swing that resulted in him damaging his rib in the first place. "I was trying to bring my club down with force and it hit the dirt at a weird angle causing the rib to separate.
"I'd never played the game before and I had like a month's crash course trying to figure out how to get a swing, any swing. I'm not very good but at least it looks alright."
Don't think he's complaining. "After all, we're pampered actors. It wasn't the most horrible thing having to swing a golf club and now I can play charity tournaments."
In the film, golf is really a metaphor for life. Damon's character, Rannulph Junuh, goes off to war as a rich golf star and returns to Georgia in the depression, a broken man.
"In the war he came up against a life that had no rules and it turned his life upside down," explains Damon.
Working with Redford generated a lot of comparisons between the young actor and the golden-haired veteran. Damon, however, says it is no match.
"I refuse to even consider the comparison. There's a kind of glamour and charisma to someone like Redford or Paul Newman, it's simply not there with me."
He also insists Redford is better looking. "You're talking about one of the best looking people ever to walk the planet. I'm no ugly duckling but there's no comparison."
Damon grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His parents divorced when he was a child and he and his older brother Kyle were brought up by their mother Nancy, a professor in child education.
He dropped out of Harvard in the final year of an English degree in the hope that his appearance in the 1993 film Geronimo: An American Legend would make Hollywood sit up and take notice of him.
His career didn't take off immediately and he wrote a film script with his childhood friend Ben Affleck to get a major part. The film, Good Will Hunting, won them both a best screenplay Oscar and, as a result, Damon's career took off with the actor winning particular acclaim for his part in The Talented Mr Ripley.
But Damon is probably as well-known for his love life as for his acting success. As a relative newcomer, he found himself in the gossip columns when British actress Minnie Driver complained that he had dumped her on a TV chat show - a charge that he denies.
For a long time he and actress Winona Ryder were a celebrity couple but the pair split last year and he was linked briefly with actress Penelope Cruz, his co-star in the forthcoming film All The Pretty Horses.
"All this has to have changed me, it has been a big transition," he says of the fame game. "But I've got a good group of people around me. The same friends as before and a very understanding family, so it has been good.
"They kind of understand about all this celebrity, especially the more vapid stuff - and all this success is giving me the chance to do interesting work."
He prefers to be better known for his work than his private life and is particularly pleased with All The Pretty Horses - directed by actor Billy Bob Thornton - in which he plays an idealistic young cowboy in the 1940s.
"This is a really special picture. It's truly profound and I'm prouder of this than anything I've ever done. I wish I could make it over and over again."
Now he hopes to sit down with Good Will Hunting partner, Ben Affleck, and
write another film. "When we get the time we'll probably just sit around and
try to make each other laugh,'' he smiles.
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