The role Matt Damon was thrilled he didn’t have to play: “A movie I am glad I turned down”
Being Matt Damon presents certain benefits, one of which is that he probably hasn’t had to fight too hard for a role since Good Will Hunting transformed him from a jobbing actor to an Academy Award-winning screenwriter overnight.
Before that, though, he was in the trenches, just like everyone else. It’s enough to give anyone whiplash; he struggled to land any worthwhile parts, but the cache that comes with an Oscar immediately transformed his fortunes, and he was sharing a set with Steven Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppola in no time.
In the three decades since, he hasn’t come down from his perch, where he’s a big enough name that he’s in demand for leading roles, but not so much of a celebrity that he can’t be a character actor or a cameo merchant, too. It’s a spot not many names in the industry occupy, but there was plenty of rejection along the way.
Damon thought Courage Under Fire would be his breakthrough moment, sacrificing his health in the name of a performance he was adamant deserved at least a nomination, but on the plus side, he didn’t have to wait too long when his and Ben Affleck’s self-penned script was released the following year.
It was the culmination of years of hard graft, and the dominoes may not have fallen in the way that they did if he’d gotten another gig he was desperate for. “I auditioned for To Die For, and lost out to Joaquin Phoenix,” he revealed to Tim Nasson. “While I wasn’t happy I lost out on the part, if I hadn’t auditioned for it, I doubt I ever would have met Gus Van Sant.”
Damon would go on to reflect on losing Primal Fear to Edward Norton, a role he knew would be a game-changer for whoever got it, and his disinterest in Sam Raimi’s The Quick and the Dead, which was eventually snapped up by Leonardo DiCaprio, who wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about it in the beginning, either, even if its cult classic credentials have long since been secured.
“It’s all a roll of the dice,” he suggested, before pointing to one picture he was overjoyed that he didn’t star in. “I also turned down The Majestic, which Jim Carrey picked up,” Damon shared. “That is a movie I am glad I turned down.” Bizarrely, even though he was thrilled that he rejected top billing, he was still in it.
From the outside looking in, Frank Darabont’s first feature that wasn’t a Stephen King adaptation reeked of precision-engineered Oscar bait, with Carrey seemingly seeking to prove a point after he was snubbed for his work in The Truman Show, and, to a lesser extent, his unnecessarily committed turn in Man on the Moon.
Damon dodged a bullet when he declined the chance to be The Majestic‘s Peter Appleton, since it bombed at the box office and generated a wildly mixed response from critics, but he did make a voice cameo as Luke Trimble, the missing soldier whose identity Carrey’s protagonist adopted after a bout of amnesia. As an on-camera performer, he made Ocean’s Eleven instead, which was the right call.
