The 2001 movie Matt Damon wishes he was in: “Just blew me away”
You probaly wouldn’t think it, but even the most well-respected Hollywood household names sometimes look back and wish they’d done something differently, or pondered about how their journey had been, had they said yes to a certain project or had the chance to star in one of their favourite movies. Matt Damon is no exception.
It may sound particularly cliché, but Damon is actually someone who rarely dwells on the past. In fact, when he was once asked about how he defined success, his answer was about as composed and dignified as you’d expect from a Hollywood heavyweight who’s been in the business for longer than most.
“I have done enough movies now — movies that have failed, movies that have been successful,” the actor reflected to The Talks back in 2019. “All we have as the people making it is the love of the doing of it. I am aware of the results because I have to be; it has an impact on my career so I can’t be ignorant of the movies that I am doing.”
He added, “But it’s really about feeling that I did my best work, the best work I could do under the circumstances, feeling that we told the story we wanted to tell in the way we wanted to tell it. That’s really the definition of success.”
Thus, in the nearly four decades Damon has been in the business, he’s learned a thing or two about simply enjoying the process, and knowing that, no matter how hard you might try, some things are destined to fail. Other times, they’re a triumph, which, as you might expect, makes all the dreariness and uncertainty all the more worth it in the long-run.
Because that’s the thing too: being a successful and reputable actor long-term is certainly no easy feat. Of course, it’s harder at the bottom when you have to constantly fight your way through countless auditions just to get a fraction of the same recognition, but when you finally do make it, there’s a whole world of resilience to learn about and even more challenges when it comes to expecting the unexpected.
Damon probably had a similar thing recently with Christopher Nolan’s latest epic, The Odyssey. If you’re a bit of a doom scroller, you’ll probably have seen the countless posts poking fun at it before release, with criticisms ranging from concerns around its casting choices to inaccuracies with the costume aesthetics and the general quality of its visuals.
Since release, however, the film has been enjoying glowing reviews, which just goes to show that you really can’t predict how a project will land once it’s out there in the open for all to see. For a film that cost about $250 million to make, you’d hope that people were going to like it. But the point is that that’s all part of the fun, and the not knowing often becomes a driving force that keeps you ready and willing to face uncertainty as and when it comes.
In a recent interview as part of the press run, Damon also revealed a piece of information that shed some more light on how much he appreciates the type of actor who can carry an entire storyline, regardless of what people might think. When asked by his co-star, Tom Holland, which “goat movie you wished you were in”, Damon responded with why he’d have loved to have been in the 1999 cult classic The Matrix, and yet why no one could ever have done a better job than Keanu Reeves.
“I love The Matrix,” said Damon. “The Matrix just blew me away when I saw it, but I couldn’t – it’s Keanu’s – it’s just so iconic, which is one of the reasons the movie works. He carries you through it. Inception is another one.”
