There was a time when, despite his Oscar, Matt Damon seemed destined to provide endless punchlines for Hollywood satirists. Then he starred in The Bourne Identity, a surprise hit that relaunched the actor's career and helped to make him Hollywood's most bankable star. As the film's third instalment heads for cinemas, he tells Donald Clarkeabout tough guys, changing nappies and holidaying with Ben Affleck
Three years ago Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the creators of South Park, delivered an extraordinary film entitled Team America: World Police. The picture, made using the same sort of puppets that used to populate the set of Thunderbirds, focused on a battle between gung-ho vigilantes and a cadre of terrorists sponsored by the North Korean government. Team America'sreal subject, however, was the vanity and pomposity that so often accompany contemporary fame. Throughout the film, wooden caricatures of various movie stars, among them George Clooney, Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon, cued up to spout meandering liberal platitudes and generally make idiots of themselves. Stone and Parker were particularly cruel to Matt Damon. As chaos broke out, the Damon doll, his head the shape of a Hovis loaf, appeared capable of saying nothing but his own name. "Maaaat Daaaamon," he grunted.
"I didn't really understand it at first," says the real Matt Damon, laughing. "Talk about not knowing your image. I saw that and I thought: Do people really think I am retarded? I guess so. I kind of learned something when I saw that movie."
People don't really think of Damon that way. But there was a time when his career seemed destined to provide endless punchlines for Hollywood satirists. In 1997 Damon and Ben Affleck, an old buddy from Boston, sprang boldly out of obscurity when they won Oscars for writing the popular melodrama Good Will Hunting. Damon, who, like Affleck, also starred in the film, went on to further success in Saving Private Ryanand The Talented Mr Ripley. But by the early part of this decade he looked in danger of becoming washed up.
The Legend of Bagger Vance, a dull golf film, and All the Pretty Horses, a flawed adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's novel, were flops, and Damon, whose chubby all-American face positively demands ridicule, began to carry about him the unhappy stench of decomposing potential. Then, in 2002, he appeared in The Bourne Identity. "The usual rule in Hollywood is three strikes and you're out," he says. "And Bagger Vanceand Pretty Horsesboth lost money. Bournehad terrible word of mouth. We were coming out a year late. Everyone was saying it was terrible. Tony Gilroy was the only writer in history to arbitrate to get his name taken off a project. They offered him sole writing credit, and he didn't want it."
As things worked out, Doug Liman's film, which starred Damon as a CIA killer who loses his memory in mysterious circumstances, was a massive hit, and Damon was escorted back behind the velvet rope that separates the A-list from the rest of us. The Bourne Supremacy, directed with characteristic kinetic verve by Paul Greengrass, was an even bigger hit in 2004. They have helped the actor deliver Hollywood's "best bang for the buck", according to Forbesmagazine, which calculated this week that, "for every dollar Damon star got paid for his last three roles, his films returned $29 of gross income" - more than twice the return on stars such as Tom Hanks and Tom Cruise. Now Greengrass's excellent The Bourne Ultimatum, possibly the conclusion to a trilogy, comes clattering towards us.
Damon, who is thinner than he used to be but, at 36, is still round-faced and boyish, has joined me in a Beverly Hills hotel to promote the new film. Sharp and articulate, with an admirable taste for self-deprecating quips, he could not be more different from the slavering dunderhead in Team America. At no stage does he chew his knuckles or bellow his name.
"I like the fact that Jason Bourne is in conflict," he says. "He is trying to do the decent thing and carries all this guilt for the bad things he has done. But basically it is all middle-aged wish fulfilment. I get bumped on the head and wake up and can kill people. I can run fast, and all the women love me. I wouldn't mind being bumped on the head and waking up with all those skills."
A glance at Damon's biography reveals that he comes from intelligent stock: his father was a tax accountant and his mother is a child psychologist of some distinction. Born and raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Damon wandered up the road after high school and enrolled at Harvard.
As an undergraduate he spent a lot of time travelling backwards and forwards to New York for auditions. Eventually, after being cast in Walter Hill's fine, though ultimately underappreciated, Geronimo: An American Legend, he decided to abandon academia permanently. I had read that his mother was unhappy with his choice. She is said to have feared that he might become a cog in the capitalist system. "I guess I always wanted to be an actor," he says. "And she knew that. The only thing my parents baulked at was me doing it professionally when younger. I did have to use my own money to travel to auditions and so forth. If I got a commercial I would put the money in the bank account, and then I would have the $70 or whatever I needed to take the shuttle from Boston to New York."
Throughout the early part of his career Damon remained happily manacled to Affleck. The two had been friends since childhood and continued to share their professional ups and downs until Good Will Hunting, the tale of an unwilling maths prodigy, helped bolt their names to the marquee. Tabloids have, unsurprisingly, worked hard at manufacturing tiffs between the pair, but they have remained on good terms. Still, they must have felt a little competitive after they broke into the big time. Who has the bigger opening weekend at the box office? Who is getting the best reviews? Those sorts of questions must have come to mind.
"Oh, look, Ben and I were auditioning for the same roles since the time we were kids," he says. "Each time we went to New York we were up for the same roles. But the only time we did have a period of competition was when I had The Bourne Identitycoming out the same time as he had the Tom Clancy thriller The Sum of All Fears. But I just remember being nervous for both of us. We both had a lot riding on that weekend."
As the years progressed, and Damon got through his brief slump, it became obvious that he had a much keener eye for a decent project than did his old chum. When Damon was reading scripts for Syrianaand The Departed, two first-class thrillers, Affleck was embarrassing himself in such unlovely films as Gigliand Paycheck. Such complementary fortunes could generate friction in a friendship, but the two continue to holiday together, and their young children now play with one another.
"It is very nice to watch our kids together," he says, smiling. "Mind you, my daughter is not really aware she is playing with Violet. She just wants to pull hair at this stage. It's a trip when you know somebody for over 20 years and you are able to then see your kids together. It is an extraordinary human experience."
He sounds so agreeably normal, doesn't he? An unexciting demeanour can be a handicap for someone pursuing a career in a business that sets great store on charisma, but directors have, in recent years, found consistently interesting things to do with his apparent ordinariness. In The Departedand the Bournefilms Damon plays a man required to function undercover in hostile surroundings. In such circumstances a tendency towards the humdrum may be a virtue.
"I always giggle at actors who think they are tough," he says. "It's utterly ridiculous. You do see some guys who are quite confrontational. They walk around with an overload of testosterone, and you know they just enjoy fighting. I am not one of those guys. I enjoy watching how hard these stunt guys have to work to make me look tough."
It comes as no surprise to learn that Damon is one of the few top movie stars - how many can you name? - to have married somebody from outside the world of celebrity. There were, it is true, quite a few stories linking him with girls from the Hello!stable at the beginning of his career. It was said that he had dumped Minnie Driver live on The Oprah Winfrey Show- "That was just false," he said, some time later. "It's something I've never talked about publicly, but we broke up three weeks before that." He was also seen about with Claire Danes and Wynona Ryder. Then, four years ago, while filming Stuck on You, the fitful Farrelly brothers comedy, in Miami, he met Luciana Bozan Barroso, an aspiring interior designer, who was working as a bartender. Towards the end of 2005, shunning the vogue for vulgar weddings featuring dancing horses and champagne fountains, the couple got hitched in a quiet civil service at New York City Hall. Damon became stepfather to his wife's first daughter, Alexia, and in June last year Luciana, an Argentinian, gave birth to Isabella.
"In the middle of filming Paul Greengrass said: 'You look like shit.' " Damon laughs. "I said sorry and explained I had been up all night with my daughter on diaper duty. He said: 'Don't worry. It's great for the part.' When I was younger I really didn't realise how little of a life I had. I would work all day and then go to the gym. Everything revolved around work. Now I skip the gym and go home to see my daughter. I think they are now shooting around my growing stomach as a result."
Making a further break from Hollywood orthodoxy, Damon and Barroso turned their backs on the mansions of Bel Air and returned to Miami, where they live a life of relative normality. A politically minded man, Damon works at a pet campaign to stop the flow of junk mail in the US and has joined Brad Pitt, George Clooney and other actors to form Not on Our Watch, an organisation that aims to make the world aware of atrocities such as the Darfur crisis. Meanwhile, Barroso pursues her own business interests.
"We live just around the corner from crazy," he says. "And that's a good place to be. If we want to go down to South Beach we can, but there is a lot for us to do there."
Is he aware of the gossip rags pointing their cameras elsewhere now that he is married? "I have no idea, to be honest," he says. "It is really hard to deal with so many of the questions about image that I am asked. I just don't sit around thinking about that. I don't mind being far away from the industry in Miami. There are certainly fewer paparazzi down there. The only time I get followed is when I am here in LA. Down there it's just me and Shakira. Unless one of us does something scandalous nobody is going to fly down with a camera."
Notwithstanding the Oprah confusion, Damon has very successfully cultivated - or simply deserved - the image of a nice man in a nasty business. Is that really desirable? Throughout the history of Hollywood, movie stars have always been aware that a hint of danger does wonders for an actor's saleability. "Oh, look, going back to that tough-guy thing we were talking about, I really laugh when I hear that. It is just ridiculous when actors get a reputation for being tough. The toughest actor out there will get his ass kicked by the softest real tough guy."
Very sensible. Damon seems to have few illusions about the greater importance of movie stars. Whereas Sean Penn, a man with a fragile ego, felt the need to send Stone and Parker an angry letter objecting to their satire, Damon is happy to own up to finding Team Americahilarious.
"Look, I think those guys are funny, and if you are going to laugh when they are making fun of somebody else you can't turn around and complain when they make fun of you. Those guys are incredibly talented, and I was happy to be included. Autograph hunters are always coming up to me now with photographs of the puppet. They say: 'Will you sign it in the voice of the puppet?' So I try and oblige. There are now a lot of those things hanging about in autograph stores."
All together now: Maaaat Daaaamon.
The Bourne Ultimatum goes on general release next Friday