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The actor argued that he had already played a stranded astronaut in “Interstellar,” and couldn’t do it twice in a row.
Key Points
- Matt Damon admits he tried to turn down The Martian because it was too similar to a role he’d already played.
- Luckily, director Ridley Scott hit him with some sage advice.
- Looking back on it now, the Odyssey actor said working with Scott was “one of the great decisions” he’s made in his life.
Matt Damon almost passed on the movie that got him his fourth Oscar nomination — and more importantly, he almost missed his chance to work with a venerated filmmaker.
During a sit-down with his The Odyssey costar Anne Hathaway for Harper’s Bazaar, Damon recounted how he initially turned down the lead role in The Martian, only for director Ridley Scott to convince him otherwise.
“I had just done that part in Interstellar,” Damon explained, referencing his brief but critical role in the 2014 Christopher Nolan film. “I got so in my head, I said, ‘Well, I just played a guy stranded on a planet, I can’t then go play a guy stranded on a planet [again].’”
But when Damon voiced his reasoning to Scott at their first in-person meeting, the director was unimpressed.
“I said that out loud to Ridley and without missing a beat, he goes, ‘Oh, no one gives a s---,’” Damon recalled. “And I was like, ‘Alright, I’ll do it.’”
Damon said it was ultimately “one of the great decisions” he’s made in his life, adding, “It was a great role with Ridley, and I had a ball doing it.”
Meanwhile, when asked if she ever turned down a role that she later regretted not playing, Hathaway said she never has — but to Damon’s point, she did express regret over not meeting with a director in-person when she decided to decline a role.
“What I know now is that you always meet with the director,” Hathaway said. “The director of that project is somebody that I have wanted to work with since and I don’t know that I’m gonna get the opportunity because he really wanted me for that part and there’s something about it that didn’t resonate with me.”
She continued, “In hindsight, I should’ve sat down with him, should’ve looked him eye to eye, explained what was going on for me and given him a chance to plead his case.”
Hathaway, who also turned down the film because it was similar to her past work, clarified that while she has no qualms about missing out on the role, she does regret “not having that moment to sit down and have my Ridley Scott go, ‘No one gives a s---.’ Because truly, no one gives a s---.’”
Getting that advice from Scott certainly served Damon well: The Martian arrived to critical acclaim, earned an impressive $630 million worldwide and garnered seven nominations at the 88th Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Damon. And by the end, Damon had forged a lasting bond with the director, which led them to collaborate again in 2021 on the 14th-century medieval epic, The Last Duel.
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When Damon spoke to Entertainment Weekly about making The Martian in 2015, he had nothing but praise for the now 88-year-old filmmaker.
“He shoots sometimes with four cameras at a time. I’ve always been very snooty about that — like, there’s only one place to put a camera at any given time. He told me, ‘Bulls---’ and puts up these four cameras,” Damon recounted. “I walked into his tent at one point and he’s got four screens up and I told him, ‘Ridley, every one of these shots is perfect.‘ He goes, ‘They’ve been perfect for a long time.’”
With a laugh, Damon added, “Even if I wasn’t working, I’d want to make movies with Ridley."
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
