Better known for his dramatic roles in The Talented Mr Ripley and Good Will Hunting, Matt Damon has been flexing his muscles and wowing audiences Stateside as the all-new action hero in the thriller The Bourne Identity. But, he readily admits, his new image did not come easy – the 31-year-old actor had to beef up and put some meat on his muscles to be ready to play a CIA super spy.
“When I first saw Doug Linman, the film’s director, he said, ‘Pull up your shirt,’ and so, I pulled up my shirt, and he goes, ‘Oh god, oh god,’” Matt says of Linman’s shocked reaction. “So I said, ‘No, in three months, don’t worry, it’s going to be as hard as a rock!’”
“I was probably in the best shape I’d ever been in,” he continues. “I really went overboard because I had like four or five months of training. I was boxing and doing martial arts and I was doing all this weapons training.”
In The Bourne Identity, Matt plays Jason Bourne, a man rescued at sea who has forgotten his identity and is found with nothing but bullets and the number of a Swiss bank account embedded in his hip. As he attempts to recall his past, he finds himself chased by both police and a hit man, with his only ally a hard-on-her-luck German wanderer – played by Run Lola Run star Franka Potente – who he pays $10,000 for a ride to Paris.
But, even collecting a $10 million paycheck and rave reviews for the role, Matt is cagey about whether he’ll continue in the action genre, even though the character he plays appears in a number of Robert Ludlum books.
“I didn’t sign up for the sequel,” he admits. “I think they have everyone else locked in for the sequel, but I don’t know – this was my first foray into this kind of action movie and so I didn’t know if I was really going to like it. But I did end up really liking it. I thought it was just kind of interesting and a little different.”
Matt, who is currently treading the boards in the Kenneth Lonergan play This Is Our Youth on London’s West End, has also adamantly denied press reports that he plans to marry his girlfriend, aspiring actress Odessa Whitmire next year. “I’m not engaged!” he insists. “I have no plans to get married or have kids. I’ve got my nephews, and that’s about all the responsibility I can handle right now.”
Photo: © Alphapress.com
Photo: © Alphapress.com
