‘I Fell Into A Depression’: Matt Damon Opened Up About Filming A Movie That He Knew Was A ‘Losing Effort’

Matt Damon got surprisingly candid during a junket interview for Oppenheimer. While calling the experience of working on the Christopher Nolan film comparable to starring in the Steven Spielberg classic, Saving Private Ryan, Damon opened up about what it’s like to star in a film that’s going in the opposite direction a.k.a. a box office bomb.

“Without naming any particular movies… sometimes you find yourself in a movie that you know, perhaps, might not be what you had hoped it would be, and you’re still making it,” Damon told Jake’s Takes before revealing the toll it took on him as not just an actor, but a father and husband. “And I remember halfway through production and you’ve still got months to go and you’ve taken your family somewhere, you know, and you’ve inconvenienced them, and I remember my wife pulling me up because I fell into a depression about like, what have I done?”

However, Damon credits his wife, Luciana Barosso, for helping him through the ordeal and getting him to a place where he realized his job is to just do the work.

Via Variety:

“I do pride myself, in a large part because of her, at being a professional actor and what being a professional actor means is you go and you do the 15-hour day and give it absolutely everything, even in what you know is going to be a losing effort. And if you can do that with the best possible attitude, then you’re a pro, and she really helped me with that.”

While Damon didn’t name the doomed film or even offer any hints, Variety notes that the actor has spoken before about filming 2016’s The Great Wall, which he knew was headed for trouble as he was making it.

“I was like, this is exactly how disasters happen,” Damon told Marc Maron’s WTF podcast in 2021. “It doesn’t cohere. It doesn’t work as a movie.”

You can see Damon’s getting candid at the 10:45 mark below:

(Via Variety)