Matt Damon confesses to committing the “dumbest thing an actor ever did”
Actor Matt Damon has reflected on rejecting James Cameron’s hit 2009 movie Avatar, calling it “the dumbest thing an actor ever did in the history of acting”.
Damon looked back on the moment in a new interview with Entertainment Tonight, where he was promoting a Stella Artois promotional campaign alongside Avatar star Zoë Saldaña. Notably, Avatar is the second-highest-grossing movie of all time, grossing over $3.5billion, with the main character, Jake Sully, played by Sam Worthington.
“I don’t think your career suffered because of it, trust me,” Saldaña told Damon before The Departed actor joked, “Do you know what kind of movie that would’ve been if I would had been in it?”
Damon commended Saldaña for her work in multiple movies grossing over $2bn, including both Avatar films and Avengers: Endgame and Infinity War. She replied: “I didn’t plan it, trust me – I’ve just always felt blessed that I was picked, that I worked really hard and auditioned. I’m not Matt Damon. I don’t get to turn down Avatars.”
Damon said: “I’ve probably done, like, 50 movies. I’ve never been in a movie that made $1 billion.”
When speaking to British GQ in October 2019, Damon looked back on turning down Avatar and labelled it one of the “bigger regrets” of his career. “Jim Cameron offered me Avatar,” he said. “And when he offered it to me, he goes, ‘Now, listen. I don’t need anybody. I don’t need a name for this, a named actor’.”
He continued: “‘If you don’t take this, I’m gonna find an unknown actor and give it to him, because the movie doesn’t really need you. But if you take the part, I’ll give you 10 per cent.”‘
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