The Oscar-winning role Matt Damon turned down: “The script was not very good”
For the last three decades, Matt Damon has occupied a curious middle ground in Hollywood. He’s too famous to be known as a character actor, but he’s also not quite a movie star by its strictest definition.
That’s not to say he can’t open a movie on his own because the Bourne franchise showed that he was more than capable of headlining a blockbuster franchise, even if he’s not quite on the same level as the certifiable A-listers who can draw an audience into the theatre based on their name alone.
Damon has been in plenty of good movies and more than a couple of great ones, but is he really the kind of guy that makes the average cinemagoer dash to their local multiplex on opening night solely because he’s in a film? It might sound harsh, even if it’s not a suggestion without merit.
Still, he’s an excellent actor who’s been in more successful films than most of his peers within the same age range, boasting the aforementioned Bourne series, the Ocean’s trilogy, Saving Private Ryan, The Martian, The Departed, Interstellar, and Oppenheimer among his most famous flicks, not to mention his position as the king of cameos having notched almost a dozen uncredited appearance.
The most famous role Damon will ever turn down will always be James Cameron’s Avatar, if only for the fact that declining the chance to play the main character in the highest-grossing release in history cost him an incredible amount of money. He’s got one Academy Award for screenwriting, but he could have won another for his on-camera efforts if the script draft he read was up to scratch.
As two stars who emerged at around the same time, Damon confessed that he and Christian Bale were frequently in the running for the same parts, which often made the latter feel suspicious. “After he would pass, I remember saying to people, ‘Why would Matt not want to do this? What am I missing?” he told GQ.
However, there was one gig Damon turned down that Bale took all the way to the Oscars podium. “I was just going to say this one because you’re so good in it: The Fighter,” he recalled. “I read the script because I thought it was fascinating, but the script was not very good. And we had a different director at the time.”
Damon was announced as Dicky Eklund when Darren Aronofsky was still attached to direct, only to drop out and be replaced by Brad Pitt, who also dropped out and was replaced by Bale. David O Russell ultimately signed on, and Damon’s loss proved to be Bale’s gain when he was named ‘Best Supporting Actor’ at the Oscars for the latest in a long line of immersive performances.
As for the script that Damon didn’t think was up to scratch? It was shortlisted for ‘Best Original Screenplay’, with Eric Johnson and Paul Tamasy’s draft getting a polish from Scott Silver that brought it up another level.
