Matt Damon, golden boy

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This was published 14 years ago

Matt Damon, golden boy

Helen Barlow reveals the joking family man who is the real Matt Damon.

By Helen Barlow

Matt Damon is an actor who uses his celebrity to further humanitarian causes, although he does it in a more understated fashion than his friends, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, and George Clooney. Having grown up with an older brother and single mum in a six-family post-hippie co-op in Cambridge, near Boston, he developed a keen awareness of the needs of others from an early age.

It was natural then that he would be attracted to Clint Eastwood's Invictus, a film about Nelson Mandela (and his uniting the South African people through rugby), since he had been an advocate of freeing the imprisoned black South African nationalist leader during his high school days. It is a role for which he has just received a Golden Globe nomination for best supporting actor.

Family man ... Matt Damon.

Family man ... Matt Damon.Credit: AP Photo

When Damon travelled to South Africa to make the film, in which he plays the Springbok captain Francois Pienaar, he took along - as he always does - his family, wife Luciana and their three daughters. They all got to meet Mandela during the filming. "Our kids were captivated by him," he says. "They understood immediately what an important man he is."

Still, Damon didn't really make the film out of any political agenda or in an attempt to meet Mandela. Like every actor in Hollywood, he wanted to work with Eastwood. It's no surprise that given Damon's affability and star status, they are preparing a second movie, the supernatural thriller Hereafter, based on screenplay by Peter Morgan.

"When I was talking to Clint last week, he said how he learns something new on every movie he makes," Damon says. "At 79, that's incredible. He never stops learning."

As the boyish blue-eyed Damon approaches the milestone age of 40 next year, he is being more selective. His family has become his first priority. He had long been keen to marry and was desperate to have kids, especially after his best friend Ben Affleck beat him to it. After failed romances with Claire Danes, Winona Ryder and Minnie Driver, Damon fell in love with Luciana Barroso, a former barmaid he met while filming Stuck on You in Florida in 2003. Barroso already had a daughter, Alexia, now 11, and, after marrying in December 2005, they had Isabella, 3, and Gia Zavala, 15 months, in quick succession.

"I've changed completely," Damon admits. "I mean everything's changed. We have three beautiful kids and I don't want to work 16- or 18-hour days any more. I'd rather work 12 hours and on movies I really want to do. Things open up in whole new way."

So here we are in Venice where Hollywood's Mr Nice Guy is, within a couple of days, trying to fit in a romantic getaway with his wife and the promotion of his movie The Informant! with director Steven Soderbergh, the role for which he received his second Golden Globe nomination, this one for best actor - comedy or musical. (He's also enjoyed a reunion with their Italy-loving buddy Clooney, having already taken the family for a Lake Como holiday chez Clooney.)

Damon admits having been up partying until six in the morning and although he's hardly had any sleep, he is the kind of guy who keeps it all together, even if his guard is a little down. He says he misses his kids.

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"We left them behind for the first time. It's very romantic here but there's always that thing when you're not used to being away from your kids - you just talk about them the whole time. So it's romantic but we have to watch ourselves."

He figures that Isabella was most likely conceived in Venice during their previous visit, shortly after his New York proposal to Barroso in 2005. He'd been at the festival promoting

The Brothers Grimm in which he co-starred with Heath Ledger.

"Heath's the best actor I've ever worked with," he says. "Coming off The Brothers Grimm, which wasn't particularly well-received, I remember telling people about him. 'Heath Ledger, you mean the guy from A Knight's Tale?' they would say. I'd tell them, 'No, you wait!' And then he did Brokeback Mountain and The Dark Knight. People just got a glimpse of what he was going to do. He was so full of life. I don't think I'll ever get over that, nor will anybody who knew him. He was a miracle of a man. It's just horrible. It sucks." He starts to tear up, and gulps down some much-needed mineral water.

Damon will soon have his Brokeback moment, too, when he gets together with Michael Douglas for Soderbergh's Liberace. Will they have sex?

"Again?" Damon retorts without missing a beat. Of course there have always been those rumours about him and Affleck. "Yes Ben and I met Michael in a gay bar," he deadpans, showing himself to be quite the comedian. Damon in fact will play Liberace's ex-lover who wrote a tell-all book called Behind the Candelabra after Liberace died.

"One day Stephen pulls out this book with a young blonde guy in a big fur coat and next to him is Liberace with all his rings and a big fur coat. Stephen hands me the book and goes, 'You, Michael Douglas!' So that's how you get a job with Stephen," he laughs.

"Richard LaGravenese wrote the screenplay and it's really, really, really great but we need about $30 million to get it right, to set it in the period and shoot in Las Vegas. It's tough getting money for movies at the moment, though with Michael on board it should go ahead."

Before his death from AIDS-related illnesses, Liberace had famously stayed in the closet. As with every movie Damon does, this should be interesting.

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