Matt Damon gets candid with Brut at the Cannes Film Festival

Brut America

Matt Damon opens about why he's taken more seriously as an actor while speaking to Brut at the Festival de Cannes.

Transcript

00:00I think it was really helpful early on in my career to be known as a screenwriter

00:04because I was invited into the kind of creative circle with the directors that I was working with.

00:15Oftentimes actors, we're very well known for being a little vain and for, you know,

00:21the notes we give on a script are kind of about, you know, I think my notes were taken a little

00:27more seriously because the directors and the writers that I was working with knew that I was

00:32a writer too. To what extent do you envisage your work as that of a storyteller? Yeah, I think it's

00:38a hundred percent that and it comes from that same impulse that we had, you know. I was in Australia

00:45and I saw aboriginal art that was 20,000 years old and I'm like, this is what we do. We write

00:52things down. We tell our story, you know, in any way we can and this is the best medium we've come

00:57up with to tell stories, in my opinion. In the movie, I noticed Camille Cotin is an actor and she

01:02asks your character what he thinks about the play and he tells her there's nothing true about it,

01:08that it doesn't sound true. What makes, in your opinion, a true performance, Matt?

01:14Well, I think it's all about, you know, believability, you know. It's got to be

01:19interesting enough to keep your attention, but it has to be believable and there are a thousand

01:24different ways you can ruin that as an actor and it's little things that people, I think,

01:31people are observant in ways that they don't even understand and they kind of unconsciously

01:36understand if they believe something or not based on little cues that they're receiving.

01:41Body language and, you know, what happens when they look in your eyes, do they believe what

01:46you're saying? All of that stuff makes something true.

01:56What makes a good hero?

01:57Well, it's interesting. Say, with a movie like this, for instance,

02:02you know, the protagonist is somebody that we might have certain judgments about coming in and

02:10I think the movie beautifully has a lot of empathy for him. I always walk away feeling like

02:16what connects us is so much greater than what divides us and this was no different. So I think

02:22it's an interesting, I don't know if you would call him a hero or an anti-hero, but I certainly

02:27felt like, you know, enriched after spending a couple hours with him.

02:32And also, it seems to me that you have often played kind of split characters. We were talking

02:36about the complexity of characters from the talented Mr. Ripley to the departed or even in

02:41my favorite movie, Interstellar, people who are not what they seem to be. To what extent is it

02:47something you look for and something you compose also?

02:50Well, it's always really me responding to the director, you know, who's the director and

02:55those are all really incredible directors of those films that you just named. It's Anthony

03:01Minghella, Martin Scorsese and Chris Nolan. I mean, three of the best, right? And so I'm less

03:07strategic about roles I select and more interested in the director because if a director says that

03:13they want me for their job, if it's a director that's that good, chances are they see a way for

03:17me to do it and I don't really even need to read the script. I trust them enough to know, okay,

03:23if they see me in the role, then I can probably do it.

03:25You know what I love about the movie is how it mingles American and French cinema.

03:29What do you like as an actor, but also as a screenwriter? What do you seek in French cinema?

03:34Well, I thought the script was great and I think that it was exactly that. It was that it was

03:39one of our best writers, Tom McCarthy, with Thomas, you know, Thomas Noé, like two incredible,

03:46yeah, and two amazing French writers, right? And there was that partnership that

03:51kind of made this movie that's not quite American and not quite French, but a beautiful mixture.

03:58What do they bring to the story, in your opinion?

04:03I think that they're, the movie's really unpredictable and it goes places that you

04:10can't predict where it's going to go and I think that's what makes it French and that's what makes

04:16it not, you know, because it feels like a very American, kind of Hollywood setup, right? And you

04:22think the movie's going to go, you think that around on page 20 it's going to be revealed that

04:27I was in the special forces and I have a special set of skills that I can bring, you know, and it's

04:31like, as we expect, right? But no, this is a movie about a guy who has done damage to his relationship

04:39with his daughter and he's trying to repair it. He carries all this shame and all this guilt.

04:44So how French are you now? How French have you become?

04:47Well, I still don't speak French, but I do feel like we were adopted by the city of Marseille.

04:57you

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