The movie that ruined two careers Matt Damon refused to star in: “You ought to check it out”
Hindsight remains undefeated in every walk of life, and Matt Damon would have breathed a sigh of relief that he turned down a movie that not only derailed one high-profile career but dropped a nuclear bomb on another that would create a 20-year fallout.
He had one entirely valid reason for rejecting the role, and he was correct. Damon assumed that Good Will Hunting would be the springboard to bigger and better things in Hollywood, and he was right for a while, with Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan, Francis Ford Coppola’s The Rainmaker, and Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr Ripley establishing that he wasn’t a flash in the pan.
However, his fortunes quickly soured, and when Robert Redford’s The Legend of Bagger Vance, Billy Bob Thornton’s All the Pretty Horses, and Gus Van Sant’s Gerry all underperformed with critics and at the box office, he found himself falling out of favour. He needed a hit, and he was fortunate that one came along at exactly the right time, although he wasn’t entirely convinced that The Bourne Identity would do it.
The Academy Award-winning screenwriter acknowledged that Doug Liman’s spy thriller had saved his career in the immediate aftermath. Before Jason Bourne, offers had been thin on the ground, but his unexpected reinvention as an action hero significantly increased his stock. Naturally, he was inundated with similar characters, one of which proved to be disastrous for the people who made it.
Having already played an amnesia-stricken character in a propulsive genre flick, it was inevitable that his name would be on the list when Philip K Dick’s Paycheck was being adapted for the big screen. Wisely, Damon said no, which opened the door for none other than Ben Affleck to step in and sign on the dotted line.
“Matt was obviously flattered, but when he read the script and sat down with John, he said, ‘I can’t do two amnesia pictures, or else people are going to say, ‘Why are you doing so many amnesia pictures?'” Affleck recalled to UPI. “So Matt phoned me and said, ‘I met with John Woo, it’s a really good script, and you ought to check it out.'”
If it was a “really good script”, somebody must have misplaced it along the way. Paycheck was terrible, and after sinking without a trace in cinemas, Woo became so disillusioned with working in America that he retreated to his native Hong Kong and wouldn’t make another Stateside feature for two decades. And yet, he still emerged less scathed than Affleck.
Capping off the worst year of his professional life, the sci-fi actioner gave the star his third flop of 2003 after Daredevil and Gigli, confirming that he was no longer a viable commodity as a bankable leading man. Those three movies conspired to earn him a ‘Worst Actor’ award at the Razzies and served as his breaking point.
There are certain roles an actor will regret turning down, but since Paycheck exiled Woo from Hollywood and added the final flourish to the annus horribilis that turned his best friend into a laughing stock and would take him years to recover from, it’s safe to say that Damon made the right call.
