Matt Damon Once Quipped He Almost Stopped Idolizing Robert De Niro After ‘Raging Bull’
Matt Damon was one of many actors who admired Taxi Driver star Robert De Niro. But he once joked that Raging Bull made him question his admiration for the actor for a funny reason.
Why Matt Damon once joked he hated seeing Robert De Niro gain weight in ‘Raging Bull’
Damon knows what it’s like to change his physique for a film role. He’s been experimenting with his body for movies since before hitting his stride with Good Will Hunting. He famously jeopardized his health after losing 50 pounds for Courage Under Fire. But for his 2009 feature The Informant, Damon was required to take the opposite approach to his body. Instead of losing weight, he gained weight to fit the large physique of his character. It was also a much more enjoyable process, as he was able to eat whatever he wanted.
In an interview with Daily Press, he much preferred getting into character for the Informant than for his Bourne films. The spy thrillers required the actor to be in peak shape, which meant tireless hours exercising.
“I felt fantastic. I mean, I ate whatever I wanted, and often, and I never went to the gym. What a joy. It’s quite a difference from making a movie like the Bourne movies when I have to be so athletic. When filming those, I’d come home from work at night and have to put in an extra hour at the gym,” Damon said.
He joked that working out for the Bourne films put De Niro’s own physical transformation for Raging Bull into perspective. De Niro put on 60 pounds to play a boxer in the film.
“I was aware of the famous case in which Robert DeNiro put on all that weight to play the fighter in Raging Bull – and he won the Oscar for it. I had second thoughts about admiring him so much for that. Actually, it was a lot of fun,” Damon said.
Matt Damon asked for Robert De Niro’s advice about gaining weight for ‘The Informant’
Damon ironically turned to De Niro when he had to put on extra pounds for Informant. He joked that he reminded the Oscar-winner they collaborated years ago on the film The Good Shepard.
“We worked together. I didn’t cold call him,” Damon once said according to UPI. “He then pretended to make the call, saying: ‘Hi, is this Robert De Niro? Listen, I’m a young actor and I need some advice. Got a minute? Have you ever seen Mystic Pizza? I’m in that, Ok? How about School Ties?”
To help out the younger actor, De Niro warned Damon that the fun of gaining weight wouldn’t last.
“And he said, ‘Well, the first 15 pounds are really fun and then you have to go to work after that.’ And it was true, almost, because I found 30 pounds really fun and then, towards the end, I was like, ‘I should get rid of this weight.’ But I wasn’t really that excited about getting rid of it,” he said.
Matt Damon was 1 of only a few actors Robert De Niro wanted to work with besides Leonardo DiCaprio
The Good Shepherd was a feature directed by Robert De Niro, and it saw him collaborating for the first time with Damon and Angelina Jolie. Originally, De Niro planned on casting Leonardo DiCaprio in the role, who was an actor he had familiarity with. But he felt Damon was the ideal choice for his film, and one of the only actors he’d work with.
“I was originally going to do it with Leonardo DiCaprio. I went to Matt and he said he would do it. There are only a few actors I would do it with and I’ve been very lucky to do it with him on every level,” De Niro once told MovieWeb.
