Matt Damon's Childhood Dream

Welcome to Young Hollywood.

Thank you very much.

What do you think of the place?

I love this. This is without a doubt, the funnest interview room that I've seen. It's like a nightclub, but we're in, am I allowed to say that we're in the Four Seasons hotel?

You're allowed to say. Don't tell the room. This does not look like a Four Seasons room. No, we've sort of converted the place. We don't let housekeeping in. Nobody knows what we've done with the place. So when you leave, please don't tell the people at the Four Seasons.

How long do you keep this up for, like you have to

It's been about four years, believe it or not. Okay. Yes. That's awesome. Violation of penal code 2219. Would you like to talk to a human?

No, I am okay. Thank you.

Are you being sarcastic?

Negative.

So I saw the film last night. I was blown away by it.

Great.

The director, I know he sort of showed you, like a whole visual of what the film would look like before you even started. Yeah. Down to your body, I read that he actually showed you a picture and he super imposed your face onto some fit guy's body and said when I, when the filming starts, I want you to look like this.

Yeah, I'm some guy who was like, clearly like a 20-year-old MMA fighter, you know, and I was like, what? Uh, so it took, that took a long time to get in shape. I mean, longer than it would have if I were a 20-year-old.

Well, we here at Young Hollywood, we have higher aspirations for you, so for your next film behind you in the monitor, we have sort of a visual of what you should look like for your next film. I like it with the glasses and like the gray hair. You're very like quaffed at the top.

I'm just so tan.

You're very tan and spray tan. So first of all, how did, how did you for this role? How did you sort of eat fresh, get in shape and spray tan to such a level?

I didn't do any spray tanning for this month. But uh, but it was a lot, it was like four hours of working out a day, which was actually kind of fun. It's all that kind of functional strengthening.

How do you make it fun?

Because you get stronger and you, and like normally, you know, in the past I'd box or I'd go running and, but boxing's really fun, but like with this, it was like lifting weights and getting stronger and you know, suddenly you could do more pullups and you could

And what about your diet?

That's the only part that sucks. Okay. Like I really genuinely love to eat. I mean, I was eating really well. I wasn't starving. I just was eating. I wasn't eating the stuff that I wanted to eat.

So in the film, your character Max, they show him as a little boy and he aspires to go to the Olympics. That's sort of his biggest aspiration. What was yours when you were a little boy?

Well, when I was a little boy, when I was a really little boy, I wanted to be a basketball player and Tiny was my favorite player. Nate Tiny Archibald. My father sat me down and he goes, because I said to him, I said, Dad, I'm going to be a basketball player. I don't know if I'm playing the Celtics, but I'm definitely going to be a professional basketball player. I'm playing five hours, six hours a day, you know, this is going to happen. And my dad decided to sit me down and and tell me that he was the tallest Damon ever to be born. He said I'm five foot 10 and a half inches. They call Tiny Tiny because he's 6'1. He goes, it ain't, it ain't going to happen. And uh, and I took the news pretty well. Right. And put all of that energy into acting.

Into acting. And it's somehow it sort of panned out. And it paid off. Well, on that note, I know at Comic-Con, you brought the film Elysium to Comic-Con last year and introduced the film. And I think somebody in the panel asked you what the hardest role you ever had to get into was. And your response was the hardest thing you ever had to do was actually getting that first job. So your advice as an A-lister to somebody starting out.

Well, the advice that I always give is, is don't do it. Seriously, because, because if, if my saying that dissuades you from doing it, you shouldn't do it. Like everybody told me not to do it. Everybody said, why are you going, you can, you know, you can do so many other things. Why would you choose this career? It's, you know, 95% unemployment at any given time. It's like, it's a really rough road. Um, but if you're meant to do it, then you're not going to do anything else. And so to those people, I would just say that it's always the work, the work that you do, like you have to love to work and, and work by yourself, because it's always that work that you're doing that nobody ever knows about, nobody ever hears about, nobody ever sees, nobody ever pats you on the back and says, I see that you spent all this time doing this. All of that preparation and research and stuff is the stuff that is going to pay off.

We have one thing in common with you here at Young Hollywood.

What's that?

We, I know you hijacked Kimo a couple of months ago. We tried to hijack Guillermo, his security guard. We brought him here to Young Hollywood. We laid him down on this couch. I fed him grapes and stroked his hair.

Did you really?

I did. Kimo never done this before. No. And plus you just you smell better than him. It didn't work. He's back at Kimo. But we'd like to steal you, so what do we have to do to get to get you to come over to our side?

Uh, I'll come over anytime you want. I didn't know there was a nightclub in the Four Seasons. You know, this is great news. I'll just come down, you know, to the dance party throughout the day. This place is awesome.