INTERVIEW
out of the hotel room where we meet for the interview, and he’s happy to talk about everything and anything – including the snatched night out he and Luciana had at Mayfair’s swanky Sexy Fish restaurant.
“I flew in from Korea and she flew in, we left the kids with their grandparents and had dinner. We try where we can [to have date nights],” he says. “We make an effort.”
This down-to-earth demeanour could, at least in part, be due to his upbringing: his parents divorced when he was two, and Matt was raised in a commune by his mum Nancy, The story continues: Matt says he would not rule out playing the amnesiac assassin for a fifth time
a professor of early childhood education. He set up a charity that’s since merged with another to become Water.org, which helps some of the world’s poorest people have access to clean water and sanitation.
Famously vocal about politics, what does he think of the tumultuous month we’ve just had in Westminster?
“We’re in no position to throw stones!” the Massachusetts-born star says with a laugh. “It feels like it’s the same anxiety all over the world, all over Europe and here and in America, it’s that same push-pull of: are we putting up walls or are we not? And it’s very troubling...”
He’s firmly supporting Hillary Clinton’s bid for the White House, partly because he’s “a guy in a household of five women” (his daughters are Isabella, 10, Gia, seven, and Stella, five, and stepdaughter Alexia is 17), but also because he thinks she’ll “steady the ship” – and Matt Damon with Jason Bourne co-star Alicia Vikander (left) a his wife Luciana Barroso (right) he can’t envisage a world under Donald Trump: “I think it would be reckless and dangerous for us all.”
He admits that parenthood has impacted his approach to work and, after a career spanning almost 30 years, which really took off when he and pal Ben Affleck co-wrote the Oscar-winning 1997 movie Good Will Hunting, he’s now more able to switch off when he gets home.
“I don’t know when I got my 10,000 hours in [to master acting], but it’s been a while, and so it doesn’t require me to take it home and try to suffer, that’s a younger man’s game.
“When I had kids, I found that the emotional reservoir was much more accessible and much more close to the surface,” he adds, in response to whether being a father has affected him as an actor. “I heard Anthony Hopkins once say that his process became so much more economical the older he got and the more experience he had. And I really find that to be true for myself.”
While his fans will be thrilled to see Bourne back on screen, his daughters aren’t quite so excited, but then they’ve only just been allowed to watch one of his films – The Martian, for which he was Oscar-nominated this year.
“My 10-year-old’s friends had seen it and they were telling her about it, and I said, ‘OK, I guess it’s OK for you to see it’, and we had a DVD and my other two daughters wanted to see it too.
“There’s that surgery scene at the beginning, but I sat with them and explained about the fake stomach and talked them through the whole thing... They liked it.” So is he a hero dad now? “I don’t know if they could really contextualise what was happening. I think my 10-year-old certainly knows that I make movies and kind of gets it, but the younger ones, not as much.”
As to whether he’ll be back for more Bourne in the future...
“If Paul wants to do another one, I would never say never,” says Matt. “He’s definitely going to make a couple of other films first, so we’ll do what we did last time. Call each other, and see if one pops up.” Jason Bourne is in cinemas now