Matt Damon, the average American who conquered Hollywood

During the last Cannes Film Festival, he melted in tears, overwhelmed by the emotion of a standing standing of five minutes, after the projection of Stillwater, the new thriller of the Oscar -McCarthy Oscarthy director.This innocent charm, this campus student physique - at 50 - make it sympathetic, close and terribly human.This is what we immediately like to this very gifted American actor: Matt Damon, he is the ordinary man idealized, intelligent, but never in the demonstration.

On video, the trailer for "Stillwater"

A very discreet hero

Practically absent from social networks and scandal press, married for sixteen years with the same woman - Argentina Luciana Barroso -, father of three daughters from 10 to 15 years old, he comes from him something reassuring, a stability thatsometimes lacks his colleagues Ben Affleck, Brad Pitt or Leonardo DiCaprio.Outside the screen, the actor neither looks nor the voice of the Hollywood star that he has been for twenty-five years, with more than a hundred roles to his credit, an Oscar, two Golden Globes and aStar on the Walk of Fame.His daily life is so ordinary that even the paparazzi has decamped the surroundings of his house in New York, where he has just moved, because he never does anything that deserves a photo.

He himself sometimes wonders if so much perfection would not brush up boredom: during a television interview with Robert de Niro, who directed him in state dials, and Angelina Jolie, the American presenter LarryKing had sought their names on the Internet and read the terms that people most associated with these three stars.The qualifier that came back for Niro was "intense", Angie was "sexy", Matt, "nice".Despite his sense of self -mockery, Damon had admitted to having been "slightly offended".

"A fabulous actor, all in nuances"

Matt Damon, a truly transparent gentleman?"I admit to having asked questions about Matt's originality at the start of Will Hunting, the first film we shot together (nominated nine times at the Oscar, editor's note)," says director Gus Van Sant.I was frightened, I felt like it would be unable to play the role.He landed in rehearsals with his baseball cap screwed on his head and I said to myself: “It won't work.It is too common, too American American.Not disturbed enough."And then I discovered a world!Subsequently, his panel of cinema roles demonstrated that Matt is much more than the good guy from Hollywood.He's a fabulous actor, all in nuances.»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»

Whether it is an intimate drama (Will Hunting, which he co -wrote with Ben Affleck and which earned him the Oscar for the best screenplay in 1998), of a committed film (Invictus, by Clint Eastwood), of a thriller (the infiltrates, of Scorsese, a duel at the top with DiCaprio), a smart comedy (the Ocean's Eleven saga, with his friends George Clooney and Brad Pitt) or a sophisticated blockbuster as Jassel Bourne, L'Spy he embodied in four successful films, the actor suggests the inner complexity of a character without ever falling into the escalation.

The art of transformation

"He always wanted to get rid of his external envelope of good American boy," said Steven Soderbergh of the actor he has led nine.He is aware of his intelligence and uses it to give stunning interpretations.It also has striking versatility.»»»»»»»»When we review Matt Damon's filmography, you can only be amazed by its ability to transform in a spectacular way, to slip into the shoes of a character.The American writer Peter Biskind, author of the reference book Le Nouvelle Hollywood, confides to us: "He has something of a long chaney, this legendary actor of silent cinema, nicknamed" The man with a thousand faces ".He is part of this school of Anglo-Saxon actors ready to transform, to reshape their bodies to marry their role.The directors can ask him everything: embody a sociopath as in the talented mr.Ripley, from Anthony Minghella, or a big and ugly character ... he doesn't care about his plastic.»»»»»»»»"The writer, who has known the actor since his beginnings, remembers him preparing his character in one of his first films, in the test of fire, by Edward Zwick:" Like one by Niro, to be inCloser to his role of emaciated junkie, he was going to run about 15 kilometers a day.He had lost 25 kg, cracked his digestive system and almost died.»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»

Will follow less suicidal but just as impressive physical metamorphoses, like that for his first role of action in memory in the skin, by Doug Liman, for which the actor has carved out a physics of athlete and spent three monthsTo follow a draconian training, learning boxing, the handling of weapons and fencing.For Clint Eastwood and his film Invictus, he turned into a rugby captain with steel pectorals, screaming orders with pure South African accent.The same year, he appeared with ten kilos too much in The Informing !, Of Steven Soderbergh, pale and puffy face, oily hair plated on the forehead and heavy glasses. Une panoplie à l’opposé de son statut d’«homme le plus sexy du monde»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»» que lui a attribué le magazine américain People en 2007.And for Martin Scorsese, he exceeded: in the role of the crooked Colin Sullivan, one of the two main characters of infiltrates, Matt Damon, nervous jaw, look that kills, delivers a just and masterful performance, in perfectMirror of that of Leonardo DiCaprio.

Depuis son appartement dans l’East Side de Manhattan, l’écrivain Gay Talese, pionnier du «nouveau journalisme»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»» avec Tom Wolfe et éditorialiste au New Yorker, tente de décrypter pour nous le mystère Matt Damon : «Matt Damon n’est pas simplement un grand acteur.Where I find him very strong since his beginnings is that he has managed to write intelligent scenarios himself.He struggled to sell them, have them produced and play a first role.It is a resourceful that looks like the elusive characters of Martin Scorsese, he adds.It brings together in one man Good Guy and Bad Guy, authenticity and pragmatism.Matt knows how to move very well in this great urban western that is the world of Hollywood.All his career, he has made heroic choices.»»»»»»»»»»»»Recently, this good fellow (good comrade, editor's note) said he refused a role in Avatar, by James Cameron, as well as the 10 % of the film's revenues that the director had promised him - he would have won $ 1.2 billion, According to the Hollywood Reporter -because he had already committed himself for revenge in the skin of the Jason Bourne saga and wanted to honor his promise.

Child of the counter-culture

Matt Damon has traveled a long way from his hometown of Cambridge, in the agglomeration of Boston, where he grew up in the 1970s and 1980s in a family adept at counter-culture.Cinephile of Finnish and Swedish origin, his mother, Nancy Carlsson-Paige, professor, shares with him his passion for European directors: "She showed him all the films of Truffaut and Vittorio de Sica in the original language, of the four hundredBack thief, tells Peter Biskind.Nancy has always known that he wanted to become an actor because he loved costumes and role -playing games.One day when she accidentally triggered a fire in their apartment, the reaction of Matt, aged 6, was to put on a makeshift fire costume and pretend to turn it off.»»»»»»»»»»»»At 13, Matt Damon enrolled in a dramatic art course and begins to play in pieces.His best friend of the time is his neighbor ... a certain Ben Affleck.

The two Bostonians go to the same public high school and share their unconditional love for the cinema, as well as the conviction that they will be actors: Ben Affleck dreams in Mickey Rourke, Matt Damon in Gene Hackman.They run the castings and, in 1988, at 18, Matt Damon won one of his first roles in Mystic Pizza, by Donald Petrie, with star Julia Roberts, whom he will recreate in 2001 in Ocean’s Eleven, by Soderbergh.A good student, he enrolled in Harvard in English literature but, in 1993, he left his studies before obtaining his diploma to play the main role ingeronimo.The same year, Ben Affleck turned in Dazed and Confused."Matt and Ben were not satisfied with these roles and those offered to them," continues Biskind.Affleck's father, Tim, himself an actor in his spare time, kept saying to them: "Why do you deviable want to be actors?This is the most stupid job in the world.”They ignored his advice, as children would do, and jumped in the Hollywood merry -go -round.»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»

It is at this point that Matt Damon shows Ben Affleck a script, entitled Will Hunting, on which he started working when he was in Harvard: "A film where a kid from South Boston, like you and me, is a scientist. Ce serait cool !»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»», lance-t-il à son pote.They will write the rest together, following the example of Sylvester Stallone who had managed to bring his own script to the screen, Rocky (released in 1976), and Quentin Tarantino, who had just written and realize that of reservoirDogs (1992).Released indoors in 1997, Will Huntingmarquera the triumph of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck as actors and screenwriters in Hollywood.The film tells the story of a young man of 20 years of the working class (Matt Damon) endowed with a prodigious intelligence and a talent for mathematics, which he is determined not to use.

Its superporting: intelligence

"It is a superhero film, except that the super power of the character of Matt Damon, it is intelligence," sums up the director Nicolas Saada (spy (s), Taj Mahal).Will Hunting is the idiot of the reverse village, it is a genius endowed with knowledge, sensitivity and wisdom that put him away from the world when he should be at the heartof the world.I think Matt Damon had this idea in mind when he wrote the script with Ben Affleck.»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»» Dans l’une des scènes les plus fortes du film, le personnage d’Affleck, qui joue le meilleur ami d’enfance de Will Hunting, lui dit : «Tu es mon meilleur ami, mais si dans vingt ans tu habites encore ici, que tu viens encore chez moi pour voir les matchs à la télé et que tu bosses toujours dans ce chantier, je te tue !»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»» Nicolas Saada poursuit : «C’est un film très politique, une injonction à ceux qui ont le savoir de le répandre.»»»»»»»»»»»»»»Since then, Matt Damon has shot twelve films with Ben Affleck.

The duo is playing on October 13 of the next Ridley Scott, The Last Duel, presented at the Venice Mostra, a historic drama that takes place in France in the Middle Ages, whose scenario they co -wrote.Matt Damon has an amazing ability to keep friendships for life."He is someone very faithful in work," confirms Gus Van Sant. Il donne tout !»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»» Pour Ben Affleck, «c’est le genre de copain qui n’a pas peur de se mettre dans le pétrin pour vous.»»»»»»»»»»»»»»An idealist, like many of his characters, like Legerryde Gus Van Sant who seeks the truth in the Californian desert, perhaps the most independent film in which he shot.Even his Jason Bourne, a sort of humanist James Bond, has a conscience, arises real questions in addition to being monogamous.

The actor also manages to make human Bill Baker, a character he performs alongside French actress Camille Cottin in Stillwater, of Tom McCarthy: a silent American worker working on the Oklahoma oil wells who find himself involved inA homicide in Marseille.The way in which Matt Damon draws through his game the portrait of a obtuse man, locked in a wall of silence and ignorance, and at the same time suggests the depth, altruism and sensuality of this same character is the brandEven great performers."Matt is an amazing actor, capable of being in the energy of his character in a fraction of a second, although she is very different from his," says Camille Cottin, who falls in love with him in the film.He gives off in life something very positive, laughing, generous, where his character is quite taciturn.»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»Can we imagine that his daily life as a careful husband and father feeds proximity with his characters?During a master class in July in Cannes, Matt Damon simply replied: "I love what I do.My first writing at school said: "I want to become an actor".When I play, the character varies but emotion is mine.»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»

Stillwater, from Tom McCarthy, released on September 22 and the last duel, from Ridley Scott, released on October 13.