2011.12.11 Parade magazine

Despite his movie star status, Damon keeps his life private, especially compared to some of his famous friends.

“Brad and Angie, there’s much more pressure on them than there is on me. He [Pitt] asked me what my everyday is like. I said, ‘Well, I grab the kids from school, and then we go over to the park.’ And he was just looking at me, like, ‘How can you do that?’ Because he can’t.”

Damon’s theory on why he can keep a low profile.


“I’ve been left alone, even by the paparazzi, because what sells is sex and scandal. Absent that, they really don’t have much interest in you. I’m still married, still working, still happy.”

On being the father of four girls, ranging in age from 13 months to 13 years: Stella, Gia, Isabella, and Alexia, [wife] Luciana’s daughter from a previous marriage.

“I jumped into the deep end with Lucy. I mean, Alexia was already 4. I was an extra dad…The only way I can describe it – it sounds stupid, but – at the end of How the Grinch Stole Christmas, you know how his heart grows, like, five times its size? Everything is full; it’s just full all the time.”

On staying away from shirtless scenes.


“On the first Bourne movie, I was in the best shape of my life, and we purposely never did a shot of me with my shirt off. There’s one scene where [Bourne’s lover] is pulling the shirt over my head, but what the camera sees are the two bullet holes in my back. It’s not gratuitous; there’s a point to it. I try to stay away from the beefcake shots.”

On the paparazzi plaguing his famous friends.

“Brad [Pitt] has told me stories. . . . He threw a cheeseburger at somebody. The guy had followed him to the drive-thru and Brad was like, ‘Can I just eat my cheeseburger?’ The guy pulled up next to him and Brad ended up throwing it at him, and they both looked at each other in total shock for a long moment. Neither of them could believe that it happened, you know? And then the guy went to raise his camera, and Brad sped off. So he did not get the picture. Brad left that experience feeling like, ‘Well, I didn’t get to eat my cheeseburger. I really wanted it.'”

“At the height of the whole thing with Jennifer Lopez, I remember Ben [Affleck] telling me about one of his days off. It was a Sunday, and I think he’d been shooting, like, six-day weeks. The gas tank in his car was full, and he pulled out of the driveway where they were living, and there were 20 cars there waiting. He just drove toward San Francisco, checking the gas gauge. When it was halfway full, he turned around and drove all the way back– driving for five, six hours. He never got out of the car. I saw him after that, and it was a circus, people taking pictures. I said, ‘How are you doing this?’ And he told me that story. He said, ‘I was so angry at these guys for invading my life, that I was taking the very little free time I had and wasting it, in order to get back at them.’ I think he kind of broke through to this other place. He said, ‘I just can’t give it any more energy.'”

On the karaoke date that was tweeted furiously.

“I never try to micromanage my image, because I just don’t think you can do it. It’s funny, Lucy [Damon’s wife, Luciana] and I went out the other night for John Krasinski’s birthday. We had dinner and then went out to a bar and ended up at a karaoke place. We sang everything; we hadn’t been out like that in a long time. And Lucy told me the next day, ‘Our whole night was tweeted by people.’ “

On how the Matt Damon jokes started on Jimmy Kimmel Live!

“The first time I met Jimmy was when I went to do the prime-time show. For a year he’d been saying, ‘My apologies to Matt Damon; we ran out of time.’ So he came backstage, and I asked him what that was about. And he was like, ‘You want to know what happened? I was doing a particularly lame show; I think my guests were a ventriloquist and a guy in a monkey suit. We were wrapping it up, and there was a smattering of applause in the audience. I was having kind of a low moment, and I just said, ‘My apologies to Matt Damon; we ran out of time.’ My producer was right off camera and he doubled over laughing. It was just gallows humor. Nobody else got the joke. But it made us laugh, so we started doing it every night. I have no idea why I said you; it could have been anybody.’

“At any rate, it turned into this thing. So when he did a prime-time thing I went on, and the joke was that he took so long introducing me that by the time I got on, we were out of time. So we got into a fake fight.”

On working with the animals in We Bought a Zoo.  

“Have you ever looked at a lion up close? Their eyes are amazing. They’re ancient–that’s really the only way to describe them.

    

“They needed the lion to look toward [co-star] JB Smoove and me, standing outside the gate.But we were the least interesting thing around, and [the crew] was screaming at the lion to look at us. Then they walked a zebra through these trees and high grass about 100 yards behind us. And what was incredible was, this lion–which was third-generation domestic; its grandfather was born into captivity, and its father, and him — but when this lion saw the zebra, everything changed. He turned into a hunter. We were between him and the zebra, and to see that power, you’re instantly aware, ‘I’m in the middle of a food chain.’ It’s a million years of biology.”

On the movie he wrote with John Krasinski that he plans to direct.

“It’s about a salesman who goes to a small town and is changed by [the experience]. It’s been really fun writing with John. It reminds me of writing with Ben [Affleck]. What worked about writing as partners was that it’s like ping pong. Nobody arrives with a complete idea. You arrive with the germ of an idea, and that gives the other guy an idea, which gives you an idea, which gives the other guy an idea. So where it gets really exciting is when these ideas come up between the two of you and you can’t even figure out what the genesis was. What it requires is a partner who has similar taste and a similar sense of humor.

“I met John through Emily [Blunt, Krasinski’s wife], because we did The Adjustment Bureau together. We really hit it off, and I started hanging out with John. This project came up out of that. It was something he was working on, and he had given it to Dave Eggers [Krasinski starred in Away We Go, co-scripted by Eggers], and Dave said, ‘Ah, that’s cool. Let me take it and run with it.’ So he did, and then brought it back to John, and John showed me. Dave was like, ‘Take it,’ so [John and I] started writing on weekends, while I was doing We Bought a Zoo. I went into it without any real expectations. I liked spending time with John. But it took on a life of its own and got really exciting.”

On a star’s short shelf life.

“I was down by NYU [New York University] getting a cup of coffee at Starbucks, and there were a bunch of college-age students working there. The girl at the counter said, ‘Oh, wow, I just loved you in The Departed.’ I said, ‘Thanks a lot.’ And she goes, ‘I know, I know, it was a long time ago.’ And I thought, well, there you go. Because to her, if she’s 19, it probably came out when she was 13 or 14, so it feels like a generation ago. Every five years there’s a new crop [of moviegoers], and they have no idea who you are. If your identity is somehow tied to that, you’re in deep trouble. Because if it’s not happening now, it’s going to happen at some point.”