Matt Damon

"Muscled Matty Returns"

No single actor has yo-yo'd both physically and emotionally as an actor as Matt Damon has in the past few years. He went from reprising his role as athletic, yet amnesiac superspy Jason Bourne in The Bourne Ultimatum in 2007 to this past year living happily off the fat of the land as portly food industry president turned FBI snitch Mark Whitacre, inThe Informant!. Now, the 39 year-old actor has whipped himself back into top physical condition as South African rugby team captain Francois Pinaar in the film Invictus, directed by Clint Eastwood.

Matt discussed for us how he managed to get in even better shape than Jason Bourne to fill the shoes of Francois Pinaar.

"I had a good time putting the weight on and then a tough time reshaping the weight," Damon says, "I was in better shape for this movie. I mean, I was in the gym every day and with Francois who came with me to the gym a few times. This is his life. I don't want to embarrass him. I can't. If Jason Bourne looks a little flabby, that's on me. This is the fictionalization of somebody's actual life. I didn't want to let him down. It wasn't going to be for any lack of effort, which really was what that team was famous for actually."

"They were known for going the extra mile and for knowing themselves well enough to say okay, we might not be the most talented team, and the line is even in the movie," he continues, "The coach says, 'We might not be the most talented team, but we're going to be the fittest.' Francois talked me through their training regimen. It was just unbelievable what those guys did, all of them, every single guy. It's that great thing about a great team. It's like when every single person commits to something and sublimates their own personality for the greater good of the whole team and that's

Matt Damon

"Muscled Matty Returns"

basically again the metaphor for that whole country."

For Damon, filling the shoes of Francois Pinaar was a rather tall order for him.

"Well, the first thing I did when I read the script was, I called Clint and I said, 'I can't believe this happened. I can't believe this is true,'" he recalls, " And he said, 'I couldn't either, but this is true.' So, I went immediately and looked up Francois online and I said, 'Clint, this guy is huge. We've never met but I'm 5'10.' I told him on the phone and he started laughing and he said, 'Oh hell, don't worry about that.'

"I said, 'Alright,'" Matt adds, "He said, 'You go worry about everything else.' And I said, 'Alright, I'll worry about everything else. You worry about the fact that I need to grow 6 inches to play the guy.' I had about 6 months to get ready. I worked hard on the accent and on training physically to build myself up to try to pull off the illusion of being the captain of a South African rugby team. Ultimately, I just try to look at every possible pitfall. When I'm way, way out, say 6 months away, I look at what could possibly blow this illusion? What are the things? And then, I start thinking about ways to solve those problems before I really get into it. So, I kind of made my little checklist of things I had to do and just planned it out and then I got to South Africa."

Matt elaborated for us his encounter with the rugby star.

"The very first day, Francois invited me over to his house for a gourmet dinner that he was cooking," Damon recounts, "He invited me to meet his wife and two boys. Morgan and I went. I just remember I rang the doorbell and he opened the door and I looked up at him, and the first thing I ever said to

Matt Damon

"Muscled Matty Returns"

Francois Pienaar in my life was, 'I look much bigger on film.' And he laughed and laughed and he gave me a big hug and then took me into his house and that was it."

"We were off and running and he was just an invaluable resource for me the whole time," he adds, "I was constantly asking him questions, everything from what color is your mouthpiece to what's your philosophy on the captaincy and on leading a team and life in general. He just was incredibly available and a very articulate guy and he was incredibly helpful to me."

One particularly surprising stumbling block for Damon, he says, was getting down Pinaar's accent.

"Francois's accent has changed quite a bit because he went and played in England for so many years," Matt explains, "And everybody, all of his closest friends and his wife, everybody says, 'Well, you know, his accent has changed quite a bit.' And, listening to any existing interviews from that day, you can hear how it's changed, but there was a good key to that.'

"Tim [Monich] and I, the dialect coach, talked a lot about how a lot of people, when they do a South African accent, really overdo it and end up making somebody sound like Frankenstein," he continues, "It's actually a quite beautiful accent. We talked about smoothing it out, because Francois speaks quite smoothly, and borrowing some of that and trying to make it so that it's subtle, so that it's not so over the top where you're just like 'Wait a minute. That's a little big.'"

Damon shared with us the other observations he picked up from Pinaar in bringing authenticity to his portrayal of him.

"There are the more obvious physical things that I have to do to try to pull off that magic trick, and then, just talking to him philosophically about certain things, you know, leadership," he says, "If you look at the structure of the script, it's the

Matt Damon

"Muscled Matty Returns"

greatest world leader of our time appealing to this other type of leader and forging a bond with him and basically saying, 'I need to use you to do this,' and the guy saying, 'I understand exactly why,' and his team exceeding its expectations."

"They've been asked to exceed their expectations and it's a metaphor for what the country needs to do because everybody is expecting them to not be able to heal," Matt continues, "Those were the things. It was Francois's integrity and leadership, but those were the kind of things that I needed to get across with the role and then the obvious kind of attendant physical things, lifting weights and stuff."

Matt recalled for us his experience when South African president Nelson Mandela, played in Invictus by Morgan Freeman, appeared at the Boston Common in 1990.

"Well, I was not that young," he says, "I was 19. I was in college. I remember the Boston visit. I remember the whole world tour. I remember he just went all over the place. In fact, in my high school, we had the Free Nelson Mandela ribbons. Remember the black ribbon with the writing? Kids were wearing those before they knew who he was. In fact, I have an old scrapbook that I was looking through. This is the photo album that my mother put together for me to go to college. She gave me a photo album of pictures from my whole childhood that progressed."

"And, I saw recently that the Free Nelson Mandela ribbon was in there from 1986 or 1988, probably 1988 when I graduated high school, and all the kids were wearing those ribbons," Damon adds, "So I remember. It was very big. My freshman year at Harvard in Fall of '88, I remember the Divest Now marches and everything that was going on. College campuses are usually the places where a lot of that stuff is cooking and people are talking about that stuff.

Matt Damon

"Muscled Matty Returns"

So yeah, it was a very, very big deal, the Boston visit, and really that whole kind of coming out tour that he did."

We asked Damon how much he knew about the sport of rugby, which originated in Britain, before doing Invictus.

"I knew a little bit about rugby but very, very little," Matt replies. "But I do think it helps in terms of an American audience, the game is enough like football in the sense that it's a battle for field position and you score by running across, running into what looks like an end zone and putting the ball down. I think in terms of the nuance of the game, obviously Americans won't get that stuff. But, in terms of the peanut butter and jelly version of what you need to know, I think it's pretty clear."

Matt shared with us the experience of working with Oscar-winning actor-turned filmmaker Clint Eastwood.

"Morgan and I were saying recently maybe if we sit out like for the next few years and let Clint get some more experience, he's really going to be a good director," he claims, "We're going to let him get some more films under his belt. Three more, he'll be solid. It's incredible. Both of us having been on between us probably 100 different film sets. It doesn't get any better than the way that he runs it. As Morgan was saying earlier about him enabling and allowing things to happen, Clint says, 'Look, I hire the best people I can and I put them in a position to do their best work and I get out of the way and take credit for all their stuff. He's got this crew that just is the top flight crew and every key and every person working under that key for every department."

"You walk on some movie sets and it's like walking into an emergency room and you're like 'We're just making a movie here,' " Damon

Matt Damon

"Muscled Matty Returns"

continues, "But that tension bleeds into the performances and into the film itself. Clint just runs an incredibly tight ship. It's very laid back but everybody, because we all have experience working on other movie sets, everyone is aware that they've been given enough space to do everything they need to do. And if you need something, it's given to you. If the key of a department says "I need this,' or the camera department says 'I'd like a jib arm for this or a little techno crane,' it shows up. It's just very easy. We've been entrusted to do our jobs. And then, he'll come over occasionally and give a little bit of direction but it's not a lot of chatter. It's just a suggestion, a little suggestion here, a little suggestion there, and anybody who doesn't want to hear a swear word cover their ears for a second. Clint's favorite saying is, after you do a take he goes, 'Well let's move on and let's not fuck this up by thinking about it too much.' You hear it everyday on a set with him."

Damon also stressed why Invictus is an important film to see this holiday season.

"I'd say the film is telling a story that I think is a wonderful thing to remind everybody of, in South Africa and all over the world, if we listen to the better angels of our nature, there are creative and good solutions to serious problems," Matt believes, "It's just an incredibly uplifting movie, and from the moment I read it, I was excited about being a part of the ensemble that told this story. I think it's a good thing to put out there, particularly now. There's not a lot of good news so this is a nice thing to put out for the holidays."

"I think actors, we react to the material that's out there and I probably just react more strongly to things that I

Matt Damon

"Muscled Matty Returns"

feel will have some social value," he continues, "I think this movie is a great example. I think this is a really wonderful message to put out. It's a completely non-partisan message incidentally. This is about healing and coming together and it's an incredibly uplifting story. I think that's why it appealed to me. It wasn't that I went and said, 'I want to make a movie that's about this.' It's that I read this terrific script and it was about the greatest world leader of the past 50 years and he was being played by Morgan Freeman and Clint Eastwood was directing. It was a pretty easy decision for me."

Another socially conscious project that Damon has worked on is The People Speak, a miniseries that will premiere on The History Channel December 13.

"The People Speak, I'm really proud of," he enthuses, "It came out really well. We just stumbled on a way to tell history that I think is great because it's factual. It's just the actual documents. It's the speeches and diaries and journal entries, all of these great speeches. In fact, there was the anniversary of John Brown's execution I saw a couple days ago and the Times did a whole thing and we have David Strathairn reading John Brown in The People Speak, the last thing he said on the public record before they executed him. He was just 150 years ahead of his time. It's just incredible to read his words. There's a whole movement to pardon him that I saw in the paper the other day."

"He ends up getting arrested by Robert E. Lee who leads the Secession force two years later over this issue of slavery and John Brown predicted," Matt adds, 'He said, 'This is only going to be solved with blood. This is the only way. This is a slave nation and we can't permit it anymore.' So there are these great inspirational speeches and we

Matt Damon

"Muscled Matty Returns"

hope to turn them into "” you know, have a website where teachers are going to be able to access them. If you're teaching about Frederick Douglass and you can bring a reading by Morgan Freeman into your classroom, I have a feeling high school kids are going to be much more interested and be able to connect to these voices and that was the thing. Looking at all of these readings, you connect to them much more than when you read them on the page, when you see these actors speaking the words. There's just something very powerful about it."