If you have a subscription to the US Esquire magazine, then you’ll no doubt already know that this month’s cover star is Matt Damon.
Damon has been in the acting business a long time and is good friends with the likes of Ben Affleck and Brad Pitt, but he seems to maintain his privacy despite the public taking an eager interest in the lives of those in the spotlight.
“If you can control the celebrity side of celebrity, then it’s worth it,” he says of acting. “I look at Brad—and I have for years—and when I’m with him I see the intensity of that other side of it. And the paparazzi and the insane level of aggression they have and their willingness to break the law and invade his space—well, I wonder about that trade. I remember telling him that I walk my kids to school, and his face just fell. He was very kind, but he was like, ‘You b*stard.’ Because he should be able to do that, too. And he can’t.”
Unlike many of his fellow actors, however, his parents didn’t want him to start too young, so he didn’t get his first role until he was 18.
“My mother thought it was child abuse. She literally did,” he says. “She was a professor who specialized in early childhood development, and she thought putting a child onstage or in a commercial or in a movie was child abuse. So when I did Elysium with Jodie Foster, I asked her. I mean, she’s basically been acting since she was born. I figured, if anyone’s going to know, it should be her, right? So I asked her. And she sort of smiled and said, ‘It depends on the child.’”
Read the full interview in the August 2013 issue of Esquire USA magazine!
Subscribe and save on an Esquire USA magazine subscription today.
Posted by Amy Power.