Matt Damon Once Shared How Having a Family Changed His Approach to Jason Bourne
Matt Damon didn’t know how long he’d be playing Jason Bourne for. But a lot changed in his life throughout the original Bourne trilogy, including him getting family.
How Matt Damon’s family influenced his preparation for ‘The Bourne Ultimatum’
Damon once asserted that he had no idea how long the Bourne movies were going to last. Speaking with BBC, Damon revealed that he didn’t sign for several movies at once when he was cast in The Bourne Identity. He didn’t even know if there would be a franchise.
“There were a lot of things that could have happened,” Damon once told him. “But we always said after the first one that we’d do another one if it wasn’t just a cynical money grabber; if we could actually make a movie that we felt was as good as or better than the previous one. With both the two subsequent films that was what we said and going into the third it was only that Paul [Greengrass] wanted to direct it that was my cue to sign up.”
But Damon was living a different life by the time he was filming Ultimatum. At the time, he was with his current wife Luciana Barroso, who he met while filming the comedy Stuck on You. Damon adopted one of Barroso’s children, and the two had another child before Damon began filming Ultimatum. Damon’s new family life had a huge impact on his training for the third movie.
“For me actually it was different than the other two. I used to not have a life at all. I would go in work all day, then go home and go to the gym and then go to sleep. I’d do that every day until the movie was over. But now I have a stepdaughter, I have a daughter and a life at home, so I didn’t go to the gym after work,” he said. “I showed up in really good shape ready to go. I was wearing that jacket and by the end of the movie that zipper was creeping up higher and higher. Paul actually had to cut around it at the end because I looked at a rough cut and said: ‘Remember that scene? Maybe we could use a tight shot there!’”
Matt Damon really felt his age during ‘The Bourne Ultimatum’
Damon also had a stark reminder that he wasn’t as young as he was when he shot The Bourne Identity. The actor was at the tail end of his mid 30s for the last Bourne flick. But he found that his age caught up with him while rehearsing a fight scene with his much younger co-star.
“The first movie, I was 29, and this last one, I was 36, and I definitely felt my age,” Damon once told Radio Free. “And particularly because that big fight scene in Tangier, Joey, the other actor, the guy that I’m fighting, is like 23 years old. The first movie came out and he was in high school. And so he was so happy. He was like, [British accent] ‘Mate, I’m in a Bourne fight, this is great!’ And he is in really good shape, and he’s already like a much better athlete than me. So I was like, ‘Oh, man, Joey, you’re killing me! You gotta slow down.’ And so I think it took probably a couple extra days–you know, it probably cost the studio a couple extra days because I’m a little older now.”
“I mean, I couldn’t possibly defend myself against him. He’d be like, ‘Dude, just like three moves at a time. Come on.’ So he was a good sport about it though. He did a great job,” Damon added.
