Matt Damon

Moviehole loves it some Matt Damon. We caught up with him here in Melbourne to chat about “The Bourne Identity” a few years back, and then again for “The Bourne Supremacy”, and we’ve also run into the award-winning actor on set quite a few times too – and he never shies away from a chat. Damon is always amiable, interesting to talk to, and genuinely seems to enjoy chatting to you. A nice guy in Hollywood? They’re rare, but they’re still out there. This time we chat to Damon about his role in Steven Soderbergh’s “The Informant”.

What drew you to the role of Mark Whitacre in The Informant!?

It’s one of the best roles I have ever been offered.  And what’s funny is that it came up a while ago.  It was in 2001.  I was on my fourth round of reshoots on The Bourne Identity, I’d had two movies come out that totally bombed, the Bourne movie had been delayed for a year, and all the signals were that it was going to be a disaster too.  So it was in that climate that [director] Steven [Soderbergh] called me and said he had found something for us to do together.  I was so confused because no one had called me for a job in like nine months and by any measure I was really cold in Hollywood.  I thought maybe he wanted me to write it.

Were things really that bad?

Well, my agent, who I’ve been with for a long time, is pretty honest with me, and even he was telling me my career was in the toilet.  But that’s one of the things I love about Steven, that he doesn’t care about any of that stuff or about any of the gossip: he just loves making movies and wants to work with the actors who he thinks are right for the part, which was to my benefit in this case.

So if you first talked about The Informant! eight years ago, how did you get from there to here?

It’s weird because I did three other movies [Ocean’s Eleven, Twelve and Thirteen] with Steven before we got to this.  We always knew that once we had a spare two months we could go and make The Informant! but we never seemed to have a spare two months that coincided.  We almost started and then stopped twice.  The Good Shepherd came out of nowhere for me so that delayed it one time and then Steven ended up doing Che and that slowed us down again.  But in a way it was great to walk around for seven years knowing we had that bullet in our gun.

The Informant! is based on a true story.  Did you go and meet the real Mark Whitacre?

No, because once Steven decided to do it as a comedy-and I think it’s a very funny film, by the way-it became something different and it didn’t have to be a rigorous character study, so it didn’t seem like meeting him would be the right thing.  I know that he has seen the movie though and he liked it. 

Why do you think he did the extraordinary things he did: work as a mole for the FBI, embezzle millions of dollars, and so forth?

I had to decide for myself what made him tick and I don’t really want to say what I decided.  But there are certainly several different theories that can be argued for.

The big shock at the start of the film is how different to look on screen compared to your other films.  Among other things, you gained a lot of weight.  What was the thinking behind that?

I’d emailed Steven about two months before we started work and asked him what he wanted the character to look like and he emailed back with one word: ‘doughy.’  And then he explained that it was sort of metaphor for the character because he was so hard to define.  Steven didn’t want him to have any hard edges so it would look like you couldn’t quite tell where he began or ended in the same way that you can’t quite tell when he’s lying or telling the truth.  They even changed my nose – they took the sharpness out of it with a prosthetic – and I had these things is my cheeks to make them slightly plumper and take away any hint of a jawline.  I also wore a wig that’s really well done because in real life his colleagues had bets about whether Mark was wearing a hairpiece or not.  He was, but they couldn’t quite figure it out.  The screenwriter put it there as a direction in the script, ‘Even his hair was a lie.’

You reportedly gained a total of 30lbs [14 kg] for the role.  How did you gain it and how did you lose it?

All I did was eat like I ate when I was in college and it came on shockingly fast.  Losing it was not any fun.

How did you feel when you looked at yourself in the mirror?

I thought it was a blast and my wife liked it when I paraded around with my belly hanging out.  And actors don’t usually get to eat just what they want, but for this film I’d be at home all day drinking beer and eating pizza.  My wife would walk in and look at me stuffing my face and I’d just go, ‘Hey, I’m working here!’

Do you have a preference for making big blockbusters like the Bourne films or more character-based pieces like The Informant!?

I just want there to be space for both.  A lot of the edgier stuff certainly seems to have gone to TV and it seems like films have to get bigger and bigger in order to get people to theaters.  But I think if you keep to a certain budget and don’t take too long to shoot it, there is still room for more thoughtful films like this one.

I understand you shot this film very quickly.  Was that just about saving money?

We shot in 30-something days, whereas it takes months to do one of the Bourne or Ocean’s films.  But saving money wasn’t the primary goal.  Steven’s theory on comedies is that you take as long as you need on the script and then you shoot it really fast to keep the energy and pace there.  And I like that a lot.  By the time we got to set it was more like we were doing a play.  I knew the whole thing back to front.  It made for a very joyful experience.  It really was just a lot of fun.

– CLINT MORRIS