We’ve got this set-up in this incredible place. It’s absolutely gorgeous. Even in the 2km lockdown, we’ve got trees, and woods and ocean. It’s just incredible. It feels like a fairytale. – Matt Damon On staying in Dalkey, Ireland, during Covid-19 pandemic.
What a badass, it’s just on another level. – Matt Damon Praising Irish Taoiseach (Premier) Leo Varadkar who worked as doctor testing people during coronavirus outbreak. The star spent lockdown in Dublin.
As for poker, I’ve stayed away from that, even though when I was in Vegas for Ocean’s Eleven, I would get accosted by these guys begging me to play. They just want to take my money. They see me, think ‘actor’ and see some easy money. – Matt Damon
I never wanted to do the same kind of movies over and over anyway, so my theory on it all is I’m just gonna try and dodge the label and keep doing what I am doing. – Matt Damon
I love shooting, when the character is interesting and the script is interesting, but the research beforehand is really fun. The whole process makes me anxious and restless, and I have trouble sleeping, just trying to figure out the character. – Matt Damon
That’s the way this business works: if your movies do well at the box office, you will be offered more movies. It doesn’t matter if you’re a nice guy or you’re a prick. If your movies do well, there’s a job waiting for you in Hollywood. It’s not any more complicated than that. – Matt Damon
Now I feel I have an unspoken deal with the paparazzi: ‘I won’t do anything publicly interesting if you agree not to follow me.’ – Matt Damon
The very first big photo shoot I ever did was with Bruce Weber. I couldn’t believe this guy was taking my picture, so when he told me to get in the bathtub, I just did. It’s only now, looking back, that I realise, you don’t have to do everything people tell you. – Matt Damon
Our kids are growing up with more privilege than we had; that’s true for most of my friends in L.A. I don’t know any actor who grew up with any particular privilege, so everyone wrestles with this. And I think, a lot of times, it’s about being patient with your kids. – Matt Damon
Some people get into this business and they’re so afraid to lose anything. They try to protect their position like clinging to a beachhead. These actors end up making really safe choices. I never wanted to go that route. If I go down, I’m going down swinging. – Matt Damon
Bond is part of the system. He’s an imperialist and a misogynist, and he laughs at killing people, and he sits there slugging martinis. It’ll never be the same thing as this, because Bourne is a guy who is against the establishment, who is paranoid and on the run. I just think fundamentally they’re just very different things. – Matt Damon
Success is not something I’ve wrapped my brain around. If people go to those movies, then yes, that’s true, big-time success. If not, it’s much ado about nothing. – Matt Damon
My mother is a professor of early childhood education. When I was two she would say she knew I was going to be an actor. – Matt Damon
I started ‘The Rainmaker’ in August 1996, and I’ve been working consistently ever since. It’s not like I had some grand plan; I keep getting offered jobs so good I can’t say no. – Matt Damon
I believe a solid, really strong middle-class is the key to making the country in the best way. – Matt Damon
I fell in love with a civilian. Not an actress and not a famous actress at that. Because then the attention doesn’t double – it grows exponentially. Because then suddenly everybody wants to be in your bedroom. But I don’t really give them anything. – Matt Damon
The thing that I like about Germany is that Germans are so much like us. It’s not like going to some other countries, where the differences are overwhelming and you walk around in a fog. Germans are so similar to Americans. – Matt Damon
It’s just better to be yourself than to try to be some version of what you think the other person wants. – Matt Damon
The values that I have are the values I was raised with, from where I’m from, which is a middle-class place. So that informs everything about me, my politics and all that stuff. I mean, politically, I vote against my own self-interest at every election. I actively ask these people to raise my taxes. – Matt Damon
If anybody wanted to photograph my life, they’d get bored in a day. ‘Heres Matt at home learning his lines. Here’s Matt researching in aisle six of his local library’. A few hours of that and they’d go home. – Matt Damon
I’ve been really lucky. I’ll completely forget that I’m a celebrity. And then something will happen, and I’ll go, ‘Oh, right.’ – Matt Damon
I think what makes a good actor’s director is somebody who understands what I’m doing and is respectful of it, but who also has a vision and is directing me toward their vision in a way that feels productive. – Matt Damon
Being known as a writer did change the relationships I had with directors. The rap on actors is that they always want to inflate their parts. But when directors know you write screenplays and have a different view of things, you really get invited into the huddle in a much fuller way. And those collaborations end in friendships. – Matt Damon
For Ripley I learned to play some songs on the piano, and I never really played them again. – Matt Damon
I’ve been left alone, even by the paparazzi, because what sells is sex and scandal. Absent that, they really don’t have much interest in you. I’m still married, still working, still happy. – Matt Damon
Fame is really strange. One day you’re not famous, and then the next day you are, and the odd thing is that you know intellectually that nothing in the world is different. What mattered to you yesterday are the same things that matter today, and the rules all still apply – yet everyone looks at you differently. – Matt Damon
As a struggling actor, you’re not looking for parts that define you; you’re just looking for work. – Matt Damon
I’d had people say, ‘You’ll enjoy being famous for a week, and you’ll never enjoy it again’. But I don’t think I had that week. I may have been working and missed that moment. – Matt Damon