Why Matt Damon found Robert De Niro to be a “very particular” director
Matt Damon has crafted a unique niche for himself in the film industry, seamlessly blending in roles that are intense, intricate, and often complex. Rising to fame with the critically acclaimed Good Will Hunting, he showcased an innate talent for diving deep into character. His role as Jason Bourne in the eponymous series solidified his place as a Hollywood heavyweight, presenting an intriguing blend of action-packed sequences and emotional depth.
He’s worked with Martin Scorsese on the fantastic The Departed, Ridley Scott on the critically acclaimed The Martian, and has more recently become something of a regular collaborator of Christopher Nolan’s, taking a prominent supporting role in Oppenheimer this year after previously making a fleeting cameo in Interstellar. However, despite the impressive range of directors he’s worked with, Damon’s experience under the watchful eye of the legendary Robert De Niro stood out in a league of its own.
The duo collaborated in the 2006 film The Good Shepherd, which delves into the origins of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and its intertwined relationship with America’s elite society. Damon explained the film’s backdrop to LondonNet: “The people who were there at the beginning did come out of this set, Skull & Bones, and this is all based on fact.” The movie intended to commit to authenticity and documented details of the time, with Damon emphasising that there was a lot of information available and they “wanted to be accurate in terms of representing how things actually were.”
His character in the film is an amalgamation of real-life figures, primarily inspired by James Angleton. Damon said, “We didn’t want to come out and have it be Angleton because then you’re making a biopic, which is something entirely different and wasn’t what we wanted to do. He was partly a model for the character, though.” Damon laughed at the notion of being perceived as much of a “serious SOB with no sense of humour” as his character, clarifying, “Hopefully, I am a little more fun than Edward.”
The standout point of their conversation was undoubtedly Damon’s reflection on working under De Niro’s directorship. He recalled his proximity to the interviewer: “All through shooting, he was sitting as close to me as you are now, just off camera, watching every detail of the performance and helping me, urging me to go one way or another in a scene.”
“He was very hands-on and a very particular, detail-oriented director. So that was great for me.” He lauded De Niro’s confidence as a director, praising his decision to allow Damon to approach his character in a minimalist manner, emphasising that “to broadcast their feelings is putting them in danger, potentially, so they would mask their emotions.”
Reflecting on the experience, Damon’s concluding words captured the essence of this collaboration with the legendary actor and two-time director: “It is unusual to be given permission to do that… to have someone with the confidence to say that I should be utterly natural and minimalist was great, because that’s what these characters are.”
