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Thu 30 July 2026 17:15, UK
Most actors would breathe a sigh of relief at turning down a movie that went on to flop at the box office and receive a wildly unenthusiastic reaction, but not Matt Damon, who’s regretted it for over 20 years.
He knows a thing or two about dodging turd-scented bullets, too, with the other half of Hollywood’s most iconic platonic life partnership turning down the leading roles in both Daredevil and Paycheck, which combined to do a stellar job of temporarily derailing Ben Affleck’s mainstream career.
Damon had his reasons for turning down Brokeback Mountain, too, explaining that because he’d just made The Talented Mr Ripley, a gay movie, and All the Pretty Horses, a cowboy movie, he didn’t feel like combining the two and making a gay cowboy movie was the right career move at the time.
The Academy Award-winning writer couldn’t commit to Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, but that worked out pretty well for him in the long run when he landed supporting roles in Interstellar and Oppenheimer, before cementing himself as one of the director’s go-to guys by leading The Odyssey.
Still, he’s allowed to have regrets, even if you have to say he made the right call. Damon didn’t feel the way at the time, suggesting that he was concerned the film would ruin his career beyond repair, but The Bourne Identity made him an even bigger star and launched a money-spinning franchise.
Doug Liman’s spy thriller kicked off shooting in October 2000, the exact same month Shekhar Kapur started rolling the cameras on his romantic wartime epic, The Four Feathers. As the celebrated auteur’s first feature since 1998’s Elizabeth, it was a hot ticket, and Damon was offered top billing in the picture.
“I remember that when we were starting out, everyone wanted to collaborate with Shekhar Kapur,” he explained. “I remember when I couldn’t do The Four Feathers for some reason, I was really upset about that. I think I was signed up for a Bourne movie. So, I guess, he has always been on my list, and I would like to have another go. That’s like a 20-year-old debt I’ve been carrying around in my pocket.”
Further reading: Cutting Room Floor
In the end, Heath Ledger played Harry Faversham, and in something of a full-circle moment, when they collaborated on Terry Gilliam’s The Brothers Grimm several years later, Damon called the up-and-coming Australian the single greatest actor he’d ever witnessed in person, so he wasn’t holding a grudge.
You can’t say he didn’t get the better end of the deal, though; The Four Feathers was the worst-reviewed of Kapur’s five films to date, and the $45million flick fell well short of breaking even at the box office. The Bourne Identity, meanwhile, had the opposite effect that Damon thought it would and breathed new life into his career.
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