Matt Damon battled depression while making disappointing film he knew was a 'losing effort': 'What have I done?'
Matt Damon "fell into a depression" when he knew he wasn't making a great movie.
The Oppenheimer star — who has Isabella, 17, Gia, 13, and Stella, 12, with wife Luciana Barroso and is stepfather to 24-year-old Alexia — didn't name the production, but recalled the despair he felt at uprooting his family while he worked on a project that he realised mid-way through wasn't what he had "hoped it would be".
Speaking on YouTube channel Jake's Takes, Damon said: “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.
“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?”
Family outing: Matt Damon with three of his four kids — (third from left) Stella (in a black mini dress), Gia (in long white dress), and Alexia (in a long black dress with tie straps) — at the Oppenheimer premiere in Paris on July 11. We have no idea who the others are.
In the end, Damon's wife encouraged him to hang in there.
He recalled: "She just said, ‘We’re here now’.
“You know, and it was like… 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.”
Could one of those "particular movies" Damon is referring to...The Great Wall?
The Suburbicon star previously admitted he knew The Great Wall — in which he starred as a mercenary warrior battling an alien invasion in China alongside Pedro Pascal and Andy Lau — was a "turkey" while filming the 2016 movie and realised the project was doomed when he saw how the film's Hollywood backers were pressuring director Zhang Yimou to change his vision.
Speaking to Marc Maron on his WTF podcast, Damon said: “I was like, this is exactly how disasters happen.
“It doesn’t cohere. It doesn’t work as a movie.
“I came to consider that the definition of a professional actor; knowing you’re in a turkey and going, ‘Okay, I’ve got four more months. It’s the up-at-dawn siege on Hamburger Hill. I am definitely going to die here, but I’m doing it.’
“That’s as s***** as you can feel creatively, I think. I hope to never have that feeling again.”
Watch Damon's interview (alongside Oppenheimer co-star Emily Blunt) on Jake's Takes here:
Oppenheimer opens in cinemas on July 20. — BANG SHOWBIZ
Photos: TPG News/Click Photos
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