The iconic 2009 role Matt Damon was too old to play: “What is the deal?”
Anyone who says ageism isn’t one of Hollywood’s oldest, most enduring, and common problems is lying, but it isn’t usually men who have to deal with it. Even though he was still in his 30s at the time, Matt Damon discovered that even if he pitched himself for an iconic role, he was far too old to get it.
If anything, being too young seemed more likely to cost him. Or, to be more accurate, looking too young. Much like Leonardo DiCaprio, Damon’s boyish, fresh-faced looks defined the early part of his post-Good Will Hunting career, making it easier to buy him in certain roles than others.
He worked so well as Jason Bourne in the opening instalment of the franchise for that very reason, with his unassuming, youthful visage allowing him to convincingly pass himself off as a stone-cold killer who could easily disappear into a crowd or hide in plain sight by blending into the background.
It’s what made him so effective in Saving Private Ryan and Courage Under Fire, too, but when father time caught up to him, Damon found himself in the new and unfamiliar position of being aged out. To be fair, he wasn’t actively chasing the gig, but he’d heard enough about it to become curious, so he did what any self-respecting A-lister would do and went straight to the source to ask the director.
In late 2006, the rumour mill suggested that the Academy Award-winning screenwriter was the front-runner to play Captain Kirk in JJ Abrams’ Star Trek reboot, and he wasn’t against the idea. “If the script was good, I’d do it,” he said at the time, and he even earned William Shatner’s endorsement, with the original vintage saying he’d be an excellent choice as his replacement.
“I know JJ,” he explained the following year. “I talked to JJ and said, ‘What is the deal?’ He’s like, ‘No, the Kirk in my movie is much younger, I think he’s hiring, probably, like a 20-year-old actor, or something.'” That would rule Damon, who was on the cusp of turning 37, out of the running, but Abrams told a slightly different story.
Almost the opposite, in fact, since he confirmed that they’d talked about it. “I actually approached Matt, and we had some discussions,” he countered in 2009, when his Star Trek premiered in cinemas. “On the one hand, it would have been great to work with Matt, but at the end of the day, it was such a better move to cast the movie with unknowns.”
Of course, the gig went to Chris Pine, who was 28 when the movie arrived on the big screen, which isn’t much of a difference, in Hollywood terms. However, Zachary Quinto was 31, Karl Urban and John Cho were 36, Simon Pegg was 39, and Zoe Saldaña was 29, so the cast didn’t skew as young as Damon thought, with the exception of 20-year-old Anton Yelchin.
Having him play a character as iconic as Captain Kirk might have been distracting, though, but we can’t help but imagine how he would have fared as the star of the sci-fi blockbuster, but only if Ben Affleck was cast as Spock for shits and giggles.
