Matt Damon Was Glad He Didn’t Become as Famous as Johnny Depp
Matt Damon has been one of the most famous actors in Hollywood since his Good Will Hunting days. But he felt there were other actors like Johnny Depp who were a bit more well-known than he was. Damon didn’t think this was a bad thing, however.
Matt Damon once felt being Johnny Depp-level famous would’ve been too much
Damon has known what it’s like to be in the spotlight for decades, now. And although he’s used to it now, becoming famous took a bit of an adjustment period for the actor. In an interview with People, Damon shared that he felt fortunate having Affleck around to deal with his growing stardom.
“Because the whole world just starts to treat you differently. And so your subjective experience changes. It’s like somebody rewrites your code in the Matrix, but just your code,” Damon said. “It’s like, ‘Oh, my whole experience has been altered in this really overwhelming way.’ And so to have somebody who I’ve known my whole life who I can be like, ‘Hey man, is this happening to you? Are you…?’ And to check in with him, it was really, really helpful. Stabilizing.”
Damon leading hit movies like the Bourne franchise only further expanded his star-power. But despite his growing popularity, Damon believed his fame paled in comparison to someone like Johnny Depp’s. Depp was an A-lister himself who starred in a few hit movies. But the billion-dollar Pirates of the Caribbean franchise launched Depp into a level of fame that even Damon didn’t want.
“Although I look at someone like Johnny Depp, who I think was afforded a certain amount of freedom for a long time, then he suddenly wasn’t,” Damon once told Shortlist (via Contact Music). ”For a long time he was doing great and interesting movies and was able to have it both ways. Then he was in a movie that was too damn successful. But those Pirates movies are so much more successful than anything I’ve ever been a part of that I just assume that’s another level. When you’re at the theme-park ride level…”
Matt Damon once ended up with a role that was initially supposed to go to Johnny Depp
Damon may have considered Depp a bigger star, but not everyone thought that way at one point. Damon starred in the 2005 feature Brother’s Grimm with the late Heath Ledger. But initially, the film’s director Terry Gilliam had Depp in mind for Damon’s part. The film’s producer Chuck Roven tried to convince Damon that he was the first and only choice for the movie. But Damon wasn’t buying it.
“The first thing I said to Terry was, ‘Why isn’t Johnny Depp doing this movie?’ And, you know, Chuck instantly went, ‘No, no, no! We want you!’ But I was just like looking at Terry. Because, if it were like Gus Van Sant or some director that I’d worked with a bunch of times, you know, you always try to just keep working together. So Chuck’s going, ‘No, no, we want you, we want you!’ And Terry just, without missing a beat, goes, ‘The studio wouldn’t let me do it with Johnny.’ And I went, ‘Oh, okay.’ And he said, ‘But you’re my second choice.’ All right cool, all right,” Damon once told IGN.
But Damon figured the film’s producers and directors were most likely kicking themselves after Pirates of the Caribbean debuted.
“And then, of course, half way through production, Pirates of the Caribbean came out, so I’m sure Bob Weinstein was like, ‘F***! We could have had Depp!’ They’re still kicking themselves. But that was kind of how, I thought Terry and I really got off on the right foot, because we were operating from a position of total honesty. And the whole experience with him was like that, it was just really great,” Damon said.
