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26 • THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 19, 2002
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CONTRIBUTED ART
Matt Damon follows George Clooney's advice when it comes to the fame game
Knight Ridder-Tribune
HOLLYWOOD — It was more than a year before he would work with George Clooney in "Oceans 11," and Matt Damon had never met the man. But a mutual friend offered a chance to sneak a peek at Clooney's state-of-the-art projection room.
Damon already was a movie star at that point but still wide-eyed enough to relish the thought of driving up to Clooney's home and checking out his stuff.
What made it even more fun was that Clooney wasn't supposed to be home. But guess who showed up and found Damon hanging out in his projection room?
"Suddenly, he was standing there at the door, all dripping wet with sweat from playing basketball," Damon said. "I couldn't believe it; he was just like people said. One of the guys."
"He said, 'How are you doing?' and I knew exactly what he was asking. It was about this fame thing. I told him I was OK, and we sat down and talked about it for 20 minutes.
"As I was leaving, his parting shot was:
'Don't let them keep you inside.'
"And that's been pretty much how I've lived my life," the actor said.
Damon, who stars as an amnesia victim slowly coming to the realization that he may be an assassin in "The Bourne Identity," which opened Friday, said he went about his daily life in lower Manhattan as if he were an accountant _ an accountant with an Oscar for co-writing the screenplay for "Good Will Hunting."
"Oh, I'll stay away from SoHo on the weekends because it's full of tourists, but other than that, I do all the normal things that other people do. I go to the movies, I go to restaurants, I go to the store. In London (where he is appearing in a play), I walk to the theater every day. I sign a few autographs in front of the theater, but no one bothers me during my walk."
Damon, 31, said that with the exception of Tom Cruise and a few others, being a movie star isn't like it used to be.
"At that point, the business of creating hype around movies had become its own industry. And it's a huge industry. The hunger for material to fill those TV shows and rags (tabloids) is so severe that we can never have a movie star like we used to."
"Hollywood was already turning by the time Ben (Affleck) and I came along," he said.
"The chance to make movies has blinded me to any possible downside of fame," he said. "It was never about the money, the glamour or the parties. I still don't go to the parties."
Damon, who has been a favorite target of paparazzi, said he doesn't allow the media attention to bother him.
By the way, Damon said that once he and Clooney became friends on the set of "Ocean's 11," the younger actor reminded him of the advice he had given him at his home. Clooney, in turn, had a confession
Matt Damon and Franka Potente share a romance and elude assassins in "The Bourne Identity."
Clooney said: "Well, now that I know you better, I have to footnote that. I was on the Warner Brothers lot one day and I met Paul Newman. He was making a movie and didn't know who I was. But he figured out that I was a TV star of some sort ("ER"), and it was Newman who gave me that advice.
to make.
Born in Cambridge, Mass., Damon attended Harvard University for three years as a straight-A student. He left before graduation to pursue an acting career.
"I'm just passing it along."
He already had been bitten by the acting bug and had appeared in a TV movie, "Rising Son," and two feature films, "School Ties" and "Geronimo: An American Legend."
Damon was so convinced that the latter film was going to be a major hit that he dropped out of college. It was not a hit, and Damon was fortunate to get a role in another TV movie.
Needing money, he found an old screenplay he had started in college about a math genius who works as a janitor at MIT.
He and boyhood friend Affleck worked on the screenplay as a team, while both continued to act in films to pay the rent. Damon got good notices in "Courage Under Fire" and "The Rainmaker."
Of course, it was "Good Will Hunting" that changed their lives forever, turning both young men into Oscar winners and movie stars.
Affleck went the movie-star route in bigbudget films, while Damon was credited with choosing better material and top directors, including Steven Spielberg in "Saving Private Ryan." Some of his more recent choices, such as "The Talented Mr. Ripley," "The Legend of Bagger Vance"
CONTRIBUTED ART
Matt Damon is cool under pressure as Jason Bourne, a high-level government operative who gets amnesia and awakes in Europe. He soon finds himself hunted by mysterious men. The film is based on the Robert Ludlum novel of the same title.
(directed by Robert Redford) and "All the Pretty Horses," directed by Billy Bob Thornton), have been box-office disappointments.
"I think 'Bagger' made back its money, but 'All the Pretty Horses' was an unqualified failure," he said candidly. "But I can't assess the value of my career on what happens at the box office."
According to executive producer Frank Marshall, Damon was everyone's first choice to play the title role in "The Bourne Identity," based on the Robert Ludlum novel.
"Matt is so believable on screen," Marshall said. "He looks like a good guy, and that is the key to this character. He doesn't remember who he is, and he believes he is a good guy until things start to happen to change his mind."
Damon said he's happy with the new action film, but then again, he says he's happy with all his movies.
"There is not a single movie that I've done that I wish I hadn't done."