The Men Of Hollywood

In The Green Zone, Matt Damon reunites with Paul Greengrass, the filmmaker who directed the Oscar-winner in The Bourne Supermacy and The Bourne Ultimatum. In Zone, Damon plays an Army officer in Iraq who goes rogue after realizing that his search for WMD is little more than a wild goose chase.

What was real about the combat scenes.
"Usually, we have what's called a 'technical advisor.' You can always tell that person because the actors are crowded around henpecking him with questions. But, in Green Zone, we had 30 of those guys who were Army vets, not just advising, but right beside me on camera. It would have taken a huge amount of work to train actors to do what they just did naturally. I call it NAR, 'no acting required.' You're surrounded by guys who really know what they're doing. You can really believe that you're in an intense situation."

He was glad to be the loser in a few punch-outs.
"If it's a non-Bourne movie, I try to never win a fight. I remember on The Departed, I saw this whole swath of virgin territory where none of the other actors who were into macho mode would tread. So I went to Marty Scorsese and said, 'I want to lose every fight I'm in and I don't want to look like a stud in bed with a woman.' Since then, I've always been ready to get my ass kicked."

Working on his close-up at the Oscars.
"I was glad to be nominated, but I knew I wasn't going to win. There's no pressure because you know you're not going to have to make a speech. But you don't want to look upset when you don't get the award. I e-mailed my fellow nominee Stanley Tucci and suggested we have a contest to see who could look more magnanimous when Christoph Waltz won. I liked my close-up."

How to keep the Bourne hit-machine alive.
"I think there's a good way to do a prequel with someone else, but not me. What any studio is interested in is making a franchise like Bourne an evergreen that can just go on and on. With me playing him, Bourne got his memory back three times. So I don't think anybody wants to see me say 'I don't remember' again. But you could do a prequel with another actor being the first Bourne before his identity gets passed on to me. In fact, why not two or three? As for me coming back to do him again, I'm just saying no."

A reunion with Ben Affleck?
"It's weird that twelve years have gone by since we've worked together. We wrote Good Will Hunting because we were unemployed and had all this time on our hands. Since then, the biggest obstacle to writing a script has just been all the acting work we've been getting, and now, directing work for Ben. But there's a project that could bring us together. I haven't seen that script yet, but Ben is really high on it. It's kind of like a well-known story of these two pitchers for the Yankees who swapped wives. They actually traded spouses. It just always makes me think of Raising Arizona."

How Morgan Freeman made his day.
"He recently said something great to me. Morgan was like, 'Oh, you're going to turn 40 next year.' I said, 'Yeah.' And he goes, 'It will be the prime of your life. The best decade is your 40s. It just starts getting better in your 40s.'"

Trying to avoid the pitfalls of being famous.
"I hope I'm doing a good job of it. It's pretty easy to kind of lose your way. I think working consistently with great people is really helpful. Also having kids is really helpful. They kind of disabuse you of the notion of your greatness pretty quickly. There's a routine that you get into with kids that precludes you from going back to your single days. I'm probably more boring than I used to be. I go to bed earlier and I get up earlier."

What he hopes his kids will inherit.
"From me, a sense of social justice and a desire to continue some of those programs that I'm involved with, or maybe not those exact ones, but hopefully, something to further social justice. And from my wife? She's a very wise and a very thoughtful person. Hopefully, they'll inherit that."

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