The little-known movie that almost broke Matt Damon
Winning an Academy Award for co-writing Good Will Hunting may have propelled Ben Affleck and Matt Damon to new heights that they’ve refused to come down from ever since, but the two long-time best friends didn’t exactly come out of nowhere.
Damon, in particular, had been singled out as a star on the rise, with his performances in war drama Courage Under Fire and legal thriller The Rainmaker both released shortly before his Oscar-winning screenplay also landed him a nomination for ‘Best Actor’.
In the former, Damon lent support as a soldier caught up in a military investigation that finds Denzel Washington’s Nathaniel Serling digging into a conspiracy born from the death of Meg Ryan’s Karen Walden behind enemy lines. The actor’s gaunt appearance as Andrew Ilario saw him lose so much weight that he ended up under medical supervision following the shoot.
Speaking to Film Scouts, Damn recalled that the food deprivation and strict diet required for the part was so restrictive that even the people involved in the film didn’t think he could do it: “The person that outlined the diet for me didn’t think I was going to be able to stick to it: it was too difficult,” he explained. “When I stuck to it, people got worried. ‘You have to eat, you have to be fit, you really have to be prepared’. And I refused to do so. ‘Why eat? I’ve come this far, I’m not going to stop now’.”
As admirable as that determination was, once cameras had stopped rolling and he “started eating four or five chocolate cakes, 12 beers, four steaks, tons of pasta,” his health took a turn for the worse: “I had to go on medication for dizziness, light-headedness, stress, post-traumatic stress disorder.”
He was on the prescribed course of medication for two full years to try and remedy the lingering damage to his body, which understandably taught him “a lot about what I can and can’t do, and what I should and shouldn’t do”. Damon did at least win strong notices for his performance, which justified the after-effects in his eyes, admitting that “it cost a lot to get there and I’m glad that I stuck with it.”
It’s an admirable dedication to the craft, even if Damon later clarified that his Courage Under Fire diet “could have killed me,” revealing how “a doctor told me later I could have shrunk my heart permanently.” It worked within the context of the film and his part in it, sure, but being placed under supervision and on medication to recover from what was ostensibly the fourth most prominent role in the ensemble was a risky gambit, one that he ended up paying for long after director Ed Zwick had called it a wrap.
