Matt Damon is opening up about having to power through productions knowing a film isn’t good.
The “Talented Mr. Ripley” and “Oppenheimer” actor revealed during an episode of YouTube series “Jake’s Takes” that he fell into a “depression” while filming a movie he saw heading for disaster.
“Without naming any particular movies…sometimes you find yourself in a movie that you know, perhaps, might not be what you had hoped it would be, and you’re still making it,” Damon said. “And I remember halfway through production and you’ve still got months to go and you’ve taken your family somewhere, you know, and you’ve inconvenienced them, and I remember my wife [Luciana Barroso] pulling me up because I fell into a depression about like, what have I done?”
Damon continued, “She just said, ‘We’re here now.’ You know, and it was like…I do pride myself, in a large part because of her, at being a professional actor and what being a professional actor means is you go and you do the 15-hour day and give it absolutely everything, even in what you know is going to be a losing effort. And if you can do that with the best possible attitude, then you’re a pro, and she really helped me with that.”
Perhaps that’s why Damon is trying to take projects back into his own hands. Last year, Damon founded the Artists Equity production company with longtime collaborator and fellow Oscar winner Ben Affleck. The duo’s film “Air,” which Affleck directed and Damon starred in, debuted earlier this year. Damon is also appearing in Ethan Coen’s “Drive-Away Dolls” with Margaret Qualley, Geraldine Viswanathan, Beanie Feldstein, and Pedro Pascal.
Damon’s “Oppenheimer” co-star Robert Downey Jr. similarly reflected on his past flops, calling critically panned “Dolittle” a turning point in his career post-MCU during a New York Times Magazine interview.
“I finished the Marvel contract and then hastily went into what had all the promise of being another big, fun, well-executed potential franchise in ‘Dolittle,’” Downey said. “I had some reservations. Me and my team seemed a little too excited about the deal and not quite excited enough about the merits of the execution. But at that point I was bulletproof. I was the guru of all genre movies.”
He continued, “The stress it put on my missus [producer Susan Downey] as she rolled her sleeves up to her armpits to make it even serviceable enough to bring to market was shocking. After that point — what’s that phrase? Never let a good crisis go to waste? — we had this reset of priorities and made some changes in who our closest business advisers were.”
