It\u2019s very difficult to feel bad for Matt Damon. He\u2019s one of the most successful and beloved Hollywood figures of the past 30 years, he has a stable marriage, his movies have won Academy Awards and grossed countless millions, he\u2019s dealt with none of the tabloid issues that have dogged his good buddy Ben Affleck, and he\u2019s at the center of mega-franchises like Bourne and the Oceans movies.<\/p>\n
But he has one nagging regret that he\u2019s brought up numerous times over the interviews: Turning down a lead role in the original Avatar, and the 10% of the $2.9 billion gross he says would have come his way.<\/p>\n
More from Rolling Stone<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sure it\u2019s the most money an actor ever turned down, you know?\u201d Damon told Chris Wallace in 2023. <\/a>\u201cI had a contract. I was in the middle of shooting the Bourne movie and I knew that we were going to need work at the end and I had to get it all the way to the finish line and I would have to leave the movie kind of early and leave them in the lurch a little bit and I didn\u2019t want to do that. I desperately wanted to work with Cameron. I mean, because he worked so rarely. I don\u2019t know how I could have left all my friends in the lurch. You know what I mean?\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s a \u201cwhat if?\u201d that has nagged Damon for 16 years. But in a new interview with the Hollywood Reporter<\/a>, James Cameron says that Damon doesn\u2019t quite have the facts right.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was never offered the part,\u201d Cameron said. \u201cI can\u2019t remember if I sent him the script or not. I don\u2019t think I did? Then we wound up on a call and he said, \u2018I love to explore doing a movie with you. I have a lot of respect for you as a filmmaker. [Avatar] sounds intriguing. But I really have to do this Jason Bourne movie. I\u2019ve agreed to it, it\u2019s a direct conflict, and so, regretfully, I have to turn it down.\u2019 But he was never offered. There was never a deal. We never talked about the character. We never got to that level. It was simply an availability issue.\u201d<\/p>\n Crucially, Cameron also feels that Damon is way off on the roughly $290 million the actor believes he would have gotten for the movie. \u201cNow what he\u2019s done is he\u2019s extrapolated, \u2018I get 10 percent of the gross on all my films,\u2019\u201d Cameron said. \u201cAnd if, in his mind, that\u2019s what it would\u2019ve taken for him to do Avatar, then it wouldn\u2019t have happened. Trust me on that. So he\u2019s off the hook and doesn\u2019t have to beat himself up anymore. Matt, it\u2019s okay, buddy! You didn\u2019t miss anything.\u201d<\/p>\n Let\u2019s hope this clears up Matt Damon\u2019s mind and he can sleep better tonight, knowing that $290 million was never really an option in the first place. And with a lead role in Christopher Nolan\u2019s Odyssey coming up, and the strong possibility of the long-awaited Oceans 14, we don\u2019t think he\u2019s going to be cutting coupons any time soon. (And maybe he\u2019ll make enough that he\u2019ll turn down crypto scammers when they approach him about making another commercial.<\/a>)<\/p>\n Best of Rolling Stone<\/p>\n Sign up for RollingStone’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s very difficult to feel bad for Matt Damon. He\u2019s one of the most successful and beloved Hollywood…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":192621,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[8128,106288,458,146,85,46,71561],"class_list":{"0":"post-192620","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-ben-affleck","9":"tag-cameron","10":"tag-celebrities","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-il","13":"tag-israel","14":"tag-matt-damon"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192620\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/192621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}