Interview with Matt Damon

He's been an Academy Award-winning writer, Ben Affleck's sidekick, and -- most recently -- a random Team America target. On December 7, Matt Damon's latest DVD, The Bourne Supremacy, will hit stores. The native Cambridge, Massachusetts actor took some time out of his hectic schedule to talk about his career and the role he's now most famous for -- Jason Bourne.

Gamestar: How do you pick your film roles?

Matt Damon: I guess in terms of picking jobs, my philosophy hasn't changed. Obviously, from doing one line in Chasing Amy, it was take any job I could get. But since Good Will Hunting, and since I've been offered movies rather than having to go audition for them, it's basically just been three things that I look for: It's always a script that I like, a good director and a good role. And usually I'll settle for any two of those. The combination of all three is really hard to come by. I had all three with a movie like Ripley. Like, it was a great script and a great director and a really great role. And kind of a different thing I don't normally get a chance to do. My philosophy hasn't changed. Whatever success or failures I've had have always been with those kinds of things in mind. With movies that didn't do well at all, like All the Pretty Horses...There's a version of that movie that exists that was Billy Bob [Thornton]'s cut of it that I really do love. I'm really happy that I did that movie.

GS: What impact did the success of The Bourne Identity have on your career?

MD: Right before The Bourne Identity came out, I hadn't been offered a movie in a year. Because The Legend of Bagger Vance had come out and bombed and All the Pretty Horses had come out and bombed. And the word on The Bourne Identity was that it was gonna tank also because we had pushed back the release date a couple times, and so people went, "Oh, well that's always a sign that things aren't going well." When in fact Universal had given us more money to go back and re- shoot and pick up a couple things that we needed. And we were making the movie a lot better, so we were holding the movie for the right reasons. But the outward signals from the industry were, "Oh God, this thing's gonna suck." So nobody had really called and gave me any job offers for quite some time. I went and did a play in London on a Saturday night and Bourne had opened on that Friday. And by the time I got back to NY, I got back Sunday night and Monday morning there were something like 30 script offers. So in terms of any success that I've had, it's always this kind of tenuous [thing]. I don't think anyone really feels secure.

GS: Can you talk about your casting as Jason Bourne and the appeal of this movie's anti-hero?

MD: It was a big concern when I took the job the first time. And it was something that Doug Liman and I talked a lot about. Because he thought it was really daring to cast me as this guy because of the way I look. I look so young and this guy clearly has to have a history and he's got a very dark past, and people who look at me don't necessarily think that. So there was a lot of stuff physically, in terms of getting ready. We just tried to look at every different aspect of how to make this guy as believable as possible. Because the worst thing that could happen is if you have a good movie, but the central character's just not quite believable and he's constantly taking your audience right out of movie. That's a complete disaster. The movie will just fall apart.

GS: How did you prepare for the Bourne films?

MD: I boxed for about six months before the movie and that really did help. I found just the way that you move around other people. And it's a very subtle thing. But I think the sum total of a lot of those little subtleties add up into making something either believable or not. And a lot of the weapons training, just little tips from the guy that I was training with, I put in so many hours. For one thing there was that moment in the first one where he picks up a gun for the first time and he throws it down. What it said in the screen direction was it feels so comfortable in his hand that he throws it down, and from that moment on any time he's holding a gun it's gotta look like an extension of his arm. So the only way to really get around that was just to go to the firing range and put in hundreds of hours and just shoot and shoot so that I didn't have to think about the gun. It was just there and it would never be pointed at anything I wasn't prepared to destroy. Doug (Liman) also felt...whether it's a fight sequence or something like that, it's important for me to be doing it. And this was the case for both films to make sure that I could do it in a way that looked real and credible and kept the illusion afloat.

GS: What were the challenges in becoming Jason Bourne?

MD: One of the biggest challenges starting off just as an acting thing was the fact that I don't talk a lot in the movie. And that was another thing that I really liked about it. You can't really tell in the final movie, but reading the script I only had about four scenes in the movie where I speak. But I'm on screen for a lot of the movie, so that was a huge challenge. It's a pretty dark journey that the guy goes on so to get into that mindset every day, that was a huge challenge. The good news is I kind of got my requisite amount of laughter in every day when I'd go home at night. I'd unwind a little bit, get on the phone and talk to people. Kind of re-join humanity a little bit. It's a pretty heavy role. Normally you'll look for those contradictions, some scenes of levity, but in this case it was pretty intense kind of most of the way through. But what helped is that Berlin in the winter, it gets light at about 9 in the morning and it gets dark it terms of shootable light around 3 to 3:30, and it's overcast. So the kind of mood that we were all in for those months of shooting we didn't see the sun for quite some time. I think that probably was a subconscious aid throughout the shoot.

GS: Why did you agree to do this sequel?

MD: I felt that there was no reason to make this without making it as good as or better than the first one. I like the message we put out in this mainstream movie, that when something terribly wrong happens to you, the first thing you do is want revenge. But if you sit back and think about it and take responsibility for your own actions, that you join the human race and atone for your own actions. I thought this was a good thing to put out there right now. That was why I did the movie in this day and age. We take someone who's an ultimate American weapon and have him realize he needs to atone and start to heal himself.

GS: Do you plan on teaming up with Ben Affleck in the writing department again?

MD: I think the one Ben's talking about right now is the Dennis Lehane novel that he had [called] Gone Baby Gone. He's got the rights to that one. But I don't really know what's going on with that right now. A lot depends on whether or not he wants to be in it or not, to direct it, or where his head's at. But I've been so busy doing all these other movies, I haven't had a chance to sit down and really do any writing. I mean I saw him last night. It's something we talk about every time we see each other. We want to do it, but it's a matter of kind of handling the logistics, and figuring out a way to get us in the same place at the same time. One of the things is having struggled for work for so long, even though now it's been about seven years that we've both been working consistently. Having struggled for so long through our teens and early twenties, it's kind of a [hindrance] to us to turn down work. And I think that's what we'll have to do to write something. We just have to block out the time and commit to it.

I think for both of us probably the most creatively fulfilling experience for us was Good Will Hunting just because we took an idea from the very beginning and shepherded it all the way through until it was a film. And that's just incredibly fulfilling to do that. But even like now, we'll have a lot of creative input with the directors we work with. And it is a collaborative feeling. Taking a movie like Bourne, I was really involved in a lot of ways. But at the end of the day, you know, it's the director's vision and it's gotta be because it's a director's medium and there's no getting around it, you're kind of hired labor at the end of the day. So in terms of writing and bringing something all the way from the beginning to kind of finished form is a feeling that I think we both want to have again.