Matt Damon ‘fell into depression’ on ‘losing effort’ movie set | Films | Entertainment

Movie stars like Matt Damon usually all go through the highs of a big hit and the lows of a box office bomb at some point in their careers.

Yet sometimes the star admits he knows which way it’s going even when halfway through the shoot.

Speaking with Jake’s Takes to promote Oppenheimer, the 52-year-old confessed: “Sometimes you find yourself in a movie that you know, perhaps, might not be what you had hoped it would be, and you’re still making it. 

“And I remember halfway through production and you’ve still got months to go and you’ve taken your family somewhere, you know, and you’ve inconvenienced them.

“And I remember my wife pulling me up because I fell into a depression about like, what have I done?”

Damon continued: “She just said, ‘We’re here now’. You know, and it was like…I do pride myself, in a large part because of her, at being a professional actor and what being a professional actor means is you go and you do the 15-hour day and give it absolutely everything, even in what you know is going to be a losing effort. 

“And if you can do that with the best possible attitude, then you’re a pro, and she really helped me with that.”

He may not have named the movie that made him fall into a depression, but as pointed out by Variety, the star has spoken openly about working on blockbusters he knew would bomb like The Great Wall.

The 2016 American-Chinese co-produced monster movie suffered losses as high as $75 million.

Speaking on WTF with Marc Maron in 2021 about shooting The Great Wall, Damon admitted: “It doesn’t cohere. It doesn’t work as a movie… I came to consider that the definition of a professional actor; knowing you’re in a turkey and going, ‘OK, I’ve got four more months. It’s the up-at-dawn siege on Hamburger Hill. I am definitely going to die here, but I’m doing it.’ That’s as sh***y as you can feel creatively, I think. I hope to never have that feeling again.”