Matt Damon Didn’t See the Sun for Months While Filming ‘The Bourne Supremacy’
For Matt Damon, filming the second Bourne movie Supremacy meant he had to deal with a lot of darkness. Not only figuratively, in terms of his tormented character Jason Bourne, but also literally as well.
Matt Damon’s Jason Bourne performance was helped by bad weather
Damon’s The Bourne Supremacy was considerably darker than its predecessor Identity. The 2004 thriller wasn’t just about Jason Bourne finding out who he was. It was also about the character coming to terms with the crimes he committed in the past. Because of this, the role offered the Good Will Hunting star some of the hardest challenges he faced as an actor.
“You can’t really tell until the final movie, but reading the script I only had about four scenes in the movie where I speak, but I’m on screen for a lot of the movie so that was a huge challenge,” he once said according to Black Film, illustrating what made Supremacy harder than his other films. “It’s a pretty dark journey that the guy on, so to get into mindset every day, that was a huge challenge.”
But Damon theorized that the movie’s physical setting also played a part in helping him get into character. According to the Oscar-winner, the weather on the film set was as bleak as the story the movie was telling. Which also added to Supremacy’s atmosphere in the end.
“But what helped, incidentally, was that Berlin in the winter, it gets light about nine in the morning and it gets dark, in terms of shootable light, at around three or three thirty and it’s overcast. The kind of mood that we were all in for those months of shooting, we didn’t see the sun for quite some time, so I think that probably was a subconscious aid throughout the shoot,” Damon added.
Matt Damon’s looks were initially a concern for the ‘Bourne’ series
It may be hard to picture anyone playing Jason Bourne now. But back before an actor was attached to the character, the original film’s director, Doug Liman, took a risk casting him. Bourne was written as a very tormented and worn antihero, traits that some weren’t sure a then-fresh faced Damon could accurately portray.
“It was something that Doug Lyman, the director of the first movie, and I talked about because he thought it was really daring to cast me as this guy because of the way I look,” Damon said. “I look so young and this guy clearly has to have a history and he’s got a very dark past. People don’t look at me necessary think that, so there was a lot of stuff physically in terms of getting ready.”
“We just tried to look at every different aspect and how to kind of make this guy as believable as possible because the worst thing that could happen is that if you have a good movie but the central character is just not that believable and he’s constantly taking your audience out of the movie, that’s a complete disaster. The movie would just fall apart,” he added.
Damon went through a combination of weapons training and physical fitness to help mold him into the feature’s killing machine. His efforts seemed to pay off in the end, as he was able to sell audiences on his performance as Bourne for four movies.
What Matt Damon did to unwind after shooting his ‘Bourne’ films
The dark places the Bourne franchise took Damon in weren’t places he wanted to stay too long. Fortunately, the actor had friends and family to turn to who kept his mood light and free-spirited during the grueling shoot.
“The good news is that I kind of got my requisite amount of laughter in everyday. When I’d go home at night, I’d unwind a little bit and get on the phone or talk with people in hopes of rejoining humanity for the evenings,” Damon said.
