By the time Matt Damon had established himself as a major player in Hollywood, one might have thought that he would have no fear of working with a director, regardless of their stature in the film industry. After all, Damon has worked with some huge filmmakers, including Gus van Sant, Steven Spielberg and Christopher Nolan.
However, when it came to working with Clint Eastwood, with whom Damon had collaborated on both the 2009 biographical sports film Invictus and the 2010 drama movie Hereafter, Damon admitted that he found Eastwood to be rather intimidating, although not because the director was scary himself, but rather because of his calm attitude on set.
When appearing on Hot Ones, Damon spoke of the time he starred in Invictus as Francois Pienaar, the captain of the South African rugby team at the 1995 Rugby World Cup, while Morgan Freeman played former South African President Nelson Mandela. The role was a challenging one for Damon because of the notoriously difficult South African accent, but still, he gave it his best shot.
It was a little terrifying because I was playing a South African and that’s a really hard accent to do,” said Damon on Hot Ones. “If you think about what our tongue does in an American accent, it’s like the polar opposite. It required a lot of practice and I treated it like a job and tested that theory on day one of shooting.”
After doing the first take on the shoot, Damon felt that it had gone “pretty well”, but was willing to give it another go in case he could get something better. However, Eastwood told the cast and crew, “Cut, print, check the gate,” which Damon explained means, “We’re done here, let’s move on.”
Still, Damon said to Eastwood, “Boss, do you think maybe we can get one more?” Eastwood just stood and looked at Damon for a moment and asked him, Damon said. “Why? Do you want to waste everybody’s time?” Naturally, Damon was taken aback and told himself, “Okay, we’re done! Alright, let’s move on.”
Of course, this was the first time that Damon had worked with Eastwood, so he was new to this kind of directing style. Now, Eastwood wasn’t necessarily being unkind to Damon; he just knew that he wanted to move on to the next scene, so Damon ended up being happy he’d put in the prior effort in preparation, noting, “I’m glad I put that work in because I don’t think I got more than one take ever.”
Tom Hanks had also once spoken of Eastwood’s directing style, claiming that he treats his actors like horses. Hanks explained, “He says, ‘Okay, go ahead’. And then you do it. And maybe he’ll say, ‘Just take that again. Just do it one more time.’ And then you do it, and he says, ‘All right, that’s enough of that.’”
There’s a real relaxation to Eastwood’s directing style in that he doesn’t expect his actors to do countless takes, unlike someone like Stanley Kubrick. Still, the experience of working with Eastwood seemed to take Matt Damon by surprise and considering the kind of acting roles that Eastwood had played early in his career, it’s no wonder that Damon had felt a little terrified of him, especially when under the added pressure of having to perform a South African accent.