One
of Hollywood’s most popular actors among his peers, Damon’s
career was launched by the unruly genius Will Hunting, the eponymous
hero of a film that earned Damon a nomination as an actor and saw him
and Ben Affleck scoop the 1996 Oscar® for Best Original Screenplay.
Damon's trajectory has continued to soar. He was excellent as a fidgety,
emaciated solider in Ed Zwick's Courage Under Fire, starred in Steven
Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan and, in 1999, conjured a memorable performance
as the creepy killer Tom Ripley. He has established himself among the
Hollywood A-list with his pair of Ocean's and Bourne films, and has
made a series of fine personal choices, from Stephen Gaghan's Syriana,
Scorsese's The Departed and now this month's The Good Shepherd, each
film benefiting from Damon's ability to project both a warm affability
and a withdrawn sourness.
It’s
back to the beginning for you — without the CIA there’d
be no Jason Bourne.
That’s true – it’s been an agency that’s provided
me with great career opportunities!
The
film suggests that the film was born from this elitist society.
Well it was. The people who were there at the beginning did come out
of this set, Skull & Bones, and this is all based on fact. It’s
a very well documented time and there have been countless biographies
written about the men who were there at the beginning. There’s
a lot of information available so we wanted to be accurate in terms
of representing how things actually were.
Your
character’s a composite based mainly on James Angleton, right?
Yeah, we didn’t want to come out and have it be Angleton because
then you’re making a biopic which is something entirely different
and wasn’t what we wanted to do. He was partly a model for the
character though.
Looking
at some of your recent roles, if they’re looking for a serious
SOB with no sense of humor, do they always come to you?
Well hopefully not in real life. Hopefully I am a little more fun that
Edward. But in terms of this role, that’s what was required. And
that was the great thing for me – doing this with De Niro. All
through shooting he was sitting as close to me as you are now, just
off camera, watching every detail of the performance and helping me,
urging me to go one way or another in a scene. He was very hands-on,
and a very particular, detail-orientated director. So that was great
for me.
Was
it unusual for you to be as understated and unemotional as your character?
It is unusual to be given permission to do that. Most films and directors
lose their nerve and want to indicate a bit more, to show that their
story is clear. I’m not saying that’s a good thing; as an
actor its anathema to good acting, but to have someone with the confidence
to say that should I be utterly natural and minimalist was great, because
that’s what these characters are. To broadcast their feelings
is putting them in danger, potentially, so they would mask their emotions.
Did
you find yourself taking on De Niro-isms?
No, he’s so unique, you’d be accused of imitating him!
As
a new father, are you more aware of the sacrifices these guys make in
terms of their family?
Most definitely, and the price that the job exacts. We did lots of research
and met some family members of some of the original guys in the CIA
and it’s a shared sacrifice. The family sacrificed too. The agents
are very busy, don’t come back much, and that’s a burden
borne by the family as well.
Now
there’s a stigma attached to the CIA. Do you think that’s
warranted?
Well, it’s confusing, because it’s always changing. The
rules have changed in the last few years, too. I think it’s something
that the citizenry needs to be vigilant about – participating
in democracy, and that includes issues like what’s going on now,
and how much secrecy and transparency there should be. That’s
an on-going thing – in a democracy you want checks and balances
and oversight, but you need a covert agency to protect the country.
It’s a very tricky balance and I think it changes as the world
changes and I think we all need to be mindful of that.
The
world changed with 9/11. Do you think the agency has a G-d complex?
I think it did at this time. Obviously, going into the Bay of Pigs,
these guys must have thought they were invincible. They’d come
up through OSS, they’d won the Second World War, had great success
in Iran in ’53 and Guatemala in ’54. They must have felt
on top of the world. Now, I think they’ve taken some hits since
then and maybe the G-d complex isn’t what it was here, like in
the scene where Richard Hayes says ‘Why don’t you put a
‘The’ in front of the CIA? Because you don’t put ‘The’
in front of G-d.” I think that probably is a true representation
of time, although not of the situation now.
In
the film, people like your character were held as idealists and true
patriots. When did idealism get such a bad name?
Well it’s a fine line. People do things in the names of good,
and in the name of ideals, but the world isn’t that simple. So
they end up doing things that aren’t necessarily good. Even if
they think they’re doing the right thing, but when viewed from
a different perspective they can look barbaric and crazy. I think in
terms of playing the role, my job was to understand why he did everything
that he did. And that was no problem – the script was well constructed,
and even though he does some unseemly things there’s a reason
why he does them. And there’s a rationale to why he’s doing
them.
You’ve
known Angelina for a few years and you’ve become closer more recently.
Did that help at all?
It was interesting because she’s so unlike the character that
she plays. I can’t imagine Angelina suffering in a relationship
where she’s not happy. She’s very independent and very strong
and yet she plays a woman very much of that time, who would live that
quiet life of silent suffering for the sake of her son. I was joking
with her that whatever her instinct was she’d do the opposite
thing, and that’s how she’d find the character. But it’s
a testament to her skill as an actor that she’s so good at playing
someone who’s so different from her.
The
Good Shepherd
Interviews
Robert De Niro
Eric Roth
Milt Bearden
Angelina Jolie
John Turturro
