The ubiquitous Mr. Damon acts with courage of his convictions

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By Stephen Whitty
Newhouse News Service
Published: Monday, December 27, 1999


MATT DAMON -- 29 years old, comfortably rich, and with a grin so wide
it hurts -- is sitting in the back of a chauffeured car, heading for
a private jet at a New Jersey airport.

It sounds like a movie star cliche. It would be, too -- if it weren't
for Matt Damon himself, now enthusiastically discussing Dante,
Shakespeare and his own hopes of turning Howard Zinn's ``A People's
History of the United States'' into a TV miniseries.

Bright and boyishly modest, Damon isn't quite what you might expect
from an American leading man. And neither -- at least for many of
his youngest fans -- is his latest film, ``The Talented Mr. Ripley,''
in which Damon plays an insecure outcast with a knack for murder.

It's an interesting choice for a Hollywood star. An incredibly risky
one, too. Because Damon's character not only kills men, he loves
them -- and his big seduction scene isn't with leading lady Gwyneth
Paltrow but a soapy bathroom one with co-star Jude Law.

``It's funny, but I was on, I think, the `Oprah' show and somebody
asked, `Are you similar to this character?' and I said, `Well no,
there are ways in which I'm not similar at all,' '' Damon says.
``And everybody laughed, and somebody said, `Oh, the bathtub scene.'
And I said, `Well, no. I was talking about killing people. You know,
that to me was the prime difference between me and the character --
although we can deal with the rest later, you know, if you want.' ''

Damon laughs -- both at the situation, and at a world where playing
a gay is more shocking than playing a murderer (``It speaks more
about the imbalance in our society than anything, doesn't it?'').
Then again, Damon can afford to smile. Wicked ``South Park'' gags
about him and Affleck notwithstanding, the actor's romances with
Claire Danes, Minnie Driver and currently Winona Ryder leave his
own sexual orientation pretty clear.


Strictly personal

Damon doesn't talk about his personal life much, however. He's
learned. Back in the ``Good Will Hunting'' days he was guileless,
telling David Letterman when he was dating co-star Driver, and
telling Oprah Winfrey when they'd broken up. Then Driver started
putting her own spin on the affair, trashing her ex to one magazine
after another. It left the actor wounded -- and wiser.

``I was raised to speak really openly about everything, that that
was kind of the road to good health,'' says Damon, whose mother has
taught and written on child psychology. ``I don't do it on
interviews any longer. . . . I still feel like I have enough people
in my life that I can talk to.''

Those people include his family and a circle of longtime friends,
including Affleck, his occasional writing partner. ``We haven't
written anything lately, but we want to,'' Damon says. ``We miss it,
and we miss each other -- we miss all our friends. . . . Hopefully,
the new millennium will bring a little time to write and also kind of
reflect on what's happened to us.''

What happened, of course, was stardom -- and it happened very quickly.
One minute Damon was an English major at Harvard; the next, his
longtime love of acting was leading to small parts in movies such as
``School Ties.'' His panicked, painfully thin medic in ``Courage Under
Fire'' won him his first real attention in 1996; the next year, ``Good
Will Hunting'' made him a star.


Diligence counts

As an actor, Damon works hard at getting his characters right. For
``Courage Under Fire'' he ran 13 miles a day, exhausting himself until
he couldn't help but look unhappy. For the music-loving Tom Ripley, he
practiced the piano for months.

``I always start preparing a character by doing whatever it is they do
for as long as I can,'' he says. ``Sometimes it doesn't work at all,
but I think it's the most honorable way to do it.''