Matt Damon names the definitive role of his career: “On a whole number of levels”
These days, Matt Damon is Hollywood royalty. He’s an enduring movie star who has been at the top of the industry for nearly three decades and shows no sign of slowing down. However, Damon’s unassailable position at the top of the mountain wasn’t always a foregone conclusion, and there was a point in his early career when it may have slipped through his fingers if he hadn’t made one particular decision. In fact, Damon credits choosing one definitive role as the thing that altered the entire course of his career.
After Damon burst onto the Hollywood scene with Good Will Hunting in 1997, he admitted he went through some teething problems as he tried to adjust to his new star status. He made a few movies that later became cult classics – Rounders and Dogma – before notching his first bona fide leading man hit with 1999’s The Talented Mr Ripley. However, he followed that up with three critical and commercial duds in 2000: Titan AE, The Legend of Bagger Vance, and All the Pretty Horses.
Suddenly, Damon was in danger of his stardom fizzling out almost as quickly as it started. Though All the Pretty Horses is, to this day, one of his favourite movies from his career, he realised that he needed to find a hit on which he could hang his stardom. Thankfully, in 2001, he was part of the ensemble cast of Ocean’s Eleven, which gave him some surer footing. Then, in 2002, he nabbed the role that would define him for the next two decades.
“When I think about this character, I’m just incredibly grateful,” Damon told Front Row Features in 2016. “I’m really grateful that it came my way [and] that Doug Liman -before anybody – just saw that I could do this. I had never done anything close to an action movie before The Bourne Identity and it was really Doug who believed in me and who decided to give me the chance.”
Yes, the role that cemented Damon’s status as a movie star was amnesiac superspy Jason Bourne, a character he went on to play three more times. Bourne showed the world – and Hollywood power players – that Damon wasn’t only a fantastic young actor and dramatic powerhouse, but that he also had action chops and could carry his own franchise. “The impact on my career and on my life is really incalculable,” he mused. “The whole trajectory of my career changed when this role came into my life.”
Interestingly, Damon revealed that Bourne didn’t only change his career by making him lots of money and showing people he could be an action star. Instead, the franchise’s continued success freed him up to tackle more challenging, off-the-beaten-path projects “with reckless abandon” in the years between Bourne instalments. He knew he always had Bourne in his back pocket as an almost-guaranteed hit, and therefore, it didn’t matter as much if the likes of Syriana, The Good Shepherd, The Informant!, and Promised Land weren’t huge moneymakers.
“I could choose a lot of my roles without the considerations that actors sometimes have to make, if you have to guess how the movie is going to do at the box office,” Damon explained. “Is it going to find an audience? All that kind of stuff. I’ve been kind of inoculated from that because of this role.”
Overall, Damon feels he owes a lot to Bourne “on a whole number of levels.” So much so, in fact, that, unlike some actors who have played franchise characters, he has no qualms if it is the part most people remember him for. “I’m sure I’ll always be associated with this role no matter what else I do,” he mused. “To do something four separate times in your career, it’s going to follow you around.” However, with a light smile, he admitted, “I don’t mind being followed around by Jason Bourne. I like Jason Bourne.”
