The back-to-back bombs that almost ruined Matt Damon: “I didn’t have an offer for a year”
You might think that Hollywood stars like Matt Damon have it easy, and while they don’t exactly experience the same struggles as you and I, we can often be deceived into thinking that they’re perfectly secure in their careers.
However, many actors exist in limbo, uncertain of when they’ll secure their next big project. They might find themselves in a string of terribly received movies that destroy their reputation, or perhaps they’ll consistently deliver bad scripts that signal the beginning of the end of their career.
Damon might be one of Hollywood’s most well-known actors, having starred in everything from the Bourne franchise to Oppenheimer, but he has experienced times in which he feared his career was on the rocks. He emerged to acclaim in the late 1990s when he co-wrote Good Will Hunting with Ben Affleck, whom he starred alongside in the Gus Van Sant-directed film, even sharing an Oscar with his best friend for their screenplay.
From there, Damon’s career seemed like it was ready to take off even further, and he soon appeared in Steven Spielberg’s war movie Saving Private Ryan, which was swiftly followed by a performance in The Talented Mr. Ripley. The actor was on the cusp of becoming a proper A-lister, but then a few movies threatened to ruin his chances of making an enduring impact on the silver screen.
The first was 2000’s The Legend of Bagger Vance, in which he starred alongside Will Smith, with the plot taking inspiration from the Bhagavad Gita. It was an ambitious idea that blended sports drama with fantasy, but Robert Redford’s directorial effort was far from a success. While Redford already had an acclaimed career under his belt, the box-office flop didn’t matter as much to him, but for Damon, it posed the real potential of derailing his progress in Hollywood. Made on a budget of $80 million, the movie grossed just $39.5 million.
That same year, he appeared in All The Pretty Horses, another failure. Not only was it critically derided, but it lost $39million at the box office. The film saw Damon appear alongside Penélope Cruz in the western romance, but critics simply weren’t convinced that Billy Bob Thornton’s film was any good.
Thus, Damon found himself in a precarious situation, and talking to Dorset Echo in 2004, he revealed that 2000 was a stressful year for him. “You can look at me and think, ‘This guy has it all’, but let me tell you, I don’t think anyone in this business ever feels secure,” the actor explained. “After those two films, I didn’t have a movie offer for an entire year.”
Still, Damon got lucky with the release of Ocean’s Eleven in 2001, which became a huge hit at the box-office and demonstrated the actor’s talents for playing a major role in a massively successful Hollywood vehicle. The film seemed to massively redeem his career, and from there, Damon became one of the biggest blockbuster stars of his generation, working with everyone from Martin Scorsese to Christopher Nolan.
