THE BIG Bourne on the USA

Matt Damon is back on the big screen in the summer’s most hotly anticipated blockbuster, Jason Bourne. He talks to KATE WHITING about getting in shape for the bruising role and why American politics is at a crossroadsds

MATT DAMON is describing what it’s like to film a fight scene – and can’t help but chuckle at his day job.

“It’s just utterly ridiculous, we’re grown men play-fighting, you know what I mean? That’s what my job is!”

And there’s a lot of ‘play-fighting’ in his latest movie, the long-awaited action sequel Jason Bourne. The actor is back, literally by popular demand, playing the amnesiac assassin, 14 years after the franchise began with The Bourne Identity back in 2002.

“People wanted to see it,” he says. “Every airport I’m in, or every time I’m walking down the street and somebody stops me, that’s the first question, ‘Are you going to do another Bourne movie?’ So it’s exciting on one hand, but there’s also a lot of pressure.

“We definitely left it all on the field,” adds Matt, of the sheer effort that went into making it. “I hope it’s the movie people wanna see. I’m at peace with where we are.”

When we last saw Bourne, in 2007’s The Bourne Ultimatum, he had exposed the CIA’s controversial Blackbriar programme, and was swimming off into obscurity.

At the start of Jason Bourne, we discover just what he’s been doing with his time since: bare knuckle fighting on the Greek/Macedonian border.

“He did liberate himself from this Jason Bourne identity, but that hasn’t brought him any peace. He’s an incredibly tortured soul and you find him in a very dark place at the beginning of the movie,” notes Matt, who has four children with wife of 11 years Luciana Bozan Barroso (three daughters together and a stepdaughter from Barrosa’s previous marriage).

To look the part, the actor, who turned 45 last October, went on a “really boring” diet of protein and vegetables – “that was the hardest part, I like to eat!” – and spent hours spent working out in the gym.

“Just getting into shape was an up-at-dawn siege every day,” he admits, adding that director Paul Greengrass told him it would only work if he looked like he’d “suffered” (“Those are the words I repeated to myself thousands of times in the gym...”).

The training paid off: only a couple of minutes into the film, Bourne takes his shirt off for a fight, revealing an enviable washboard stomach.

It’s the first time in a Bourne film (besides one scene showing bullet holes in his back) that Matt’s had to strip for a “beefcake shot”. He says he had no problem baringg some flesh because use it wasn’t “gratuitous”. uitous”. “When you see him im looking like that, it tellss a story,” he muses. “This is a man who’s unresolved and damaged.” aged.”

Still, l, Matt adds that, in many ways, it was a “big deal” to show off his pecs ecs on camera – because the Bourne franchise has always stood apart in the spy thriller genre, as a gritty alternative to the Bond films.

“I did three movies where we specifically avoided [it]. We said, ‘We’re not that movie, we’re not that franchise franchise, the one where I come up out of the water bare-chested... There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s just a different thing.” Dressed in a simple black sweater and jeans, leather bracelets wrapped around his wrist, Matt is one of the least starry A-listers I’ve ever met. In fact, he’s more polite gent than Hollywood ego, escorting me in and

2THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY (1999)

AN opportunistic sociopath bluffs his way into the confidence of a society playboy (Jude Law) before killing him and assuming his identity. Damon’s performance as the blankly calculating Ripley is one of the best of his career.

3OCEAN’S 11 (2001)

STARRIER than a celebrity wedding at Jodrell Bank, this remake of The Ratpack’s classic 1960 heist movie saw Damon team up with the likes of George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts to raid three Las Vegas casinos.