Academy Award-winning actor Matt Damon said he promised his wife he’d take a break from acting on one condition: he’d have to reconsider if legendary filmmaker Christopher Nolan offered him a part.
The 52-year-old father of four stars in Nolan’s highly anticipated historical drama, “Oppenheimer,” which debuts July 21. During an interview with Entertainment Weekly, he explained that he didn’t technically break his promise when he accepted the role.
“This is going to sound made up, but it’s actually true,” Damon told the outlet. “I had — not to get too personal — negotiated extensively with my wife that I was taking time off. I had been in ‘Interstellar’ and then Chris put me on ice for a couple of movies, so I wasn’t in the rotation, but I actually negotiated in couples therapy — this is a true story — the one caveat to my taking time off was if Chris Nolan called.”
“This is without knowing whether or not he was working on anything, because he never tells you. He just calls you out of the blue. And so, it was a moment in my household,” the actor said.
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Nolan offered Damon the part of Leslie Groves, director of The Manhattan Project, opposite Cillian Murphy playing the titular star. Murphy said he was equally surprised to be offered the opportunity.
“He’s so understated and self-deprecating and, in his very English manner, just said, ‘Listen, I’ve written this script, it’s about Oppenheimer. I’d like you to be my Oppenheimer,’” Murphy told the Associated Press during an interview in May. “It was a great day… We have this long-standing understanding and trust and shorthand and respect. It felt like the right time to take on a bigger responsibility. And it just so happened that it was a huge one.”
Damon married longtime girlfriend, Argentine-born Luciana Bozán Barroso, in December 2005. She is not part of the entertainment industry and has no social media presence. The couple met while Damon was filming “Stuck On You” in Miami, where Barroso worked as a bartender.
They have four daughters together.