![\"Matt](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Matt-Damon-Actor-2024-Far-Out-Magazine-1-1140x855.jpg\")
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Credit: Far Out \/ Harald Krichel<\/p>\n
Mon 13 July 2026 16:45, UK <\/p>\n
In theory, a young and hungry actor desperate to get their foot in the door wouldn\u2019t think twice about accepting a key supporting role in a movie that was jam-packed with big names, but Matt Damon<\/a> felt so strongly that he said he\u2019d rather stay on the breadline than get involved.<\/p>\n As hubristic as that sounds, it\u2019s not as if he didn\u2019t become a household name for digging his heels in. After all, it would have been easy for Damon and Ben Affleck to take the money being offered for their Good Will Hunting script and hand it over to a studio, on the condition they didn\u2019t star in the movie.<\/p>\n That was completely unfathomable, and they were right to bet on themselves<\/a>, with their Academy Award win for \u2018Best Original Screenplay\u2019 propelling them to overnight stardom, and it set the template for the three decades of success that followed, even if, unlike his best friend, Affleck has had a few rocky moments.<\/p>\n Even before Gus Van Sant\u2019s drama had been released, Damon was in an interesting position. He\u2019d abandoned his studies at Harvard to focus on acting full-time because he was convinced that 1993\u2019s Geronimo: An American Legend would be a career-maker, only for the film to flop at the box office<\/a>.<\/p>\n He also almost killed himself to drop a dangerous amount of weight for 1996\u2019s Courage Under Fire, a role that took him years to recover from<\/a>, with one notable benefit being that his performance convinced Steven Spielberg he\u2019d found the perfect candidate to play the title role in Saving Private Ryan.<\/p>\n Between those two points, though, Damon turned down another major gig. The highest-paid gig of his fledgling career, no less, with TriStar Pictures offering him $250,000 to play \u2018The Kid\u2019 in The Quick and the Dead. It was life-altering money, especially for someone who only had a handful of big-screen credits to their name at the time, but he wasn\u2019t interested.<\/p>\n \u201cI want the kind of career Robert Duvall has,\u201d he explained, justifying his decision to turn down an action-packed western directed by Sam Raimi that boasted Sharon Stone, Gene Hackman, Keith David, Gary Sinise, and Lance Henriksen among its ensemble cast, and a glorified, tongue-in-cheek B-western wasn\u2019t going to give him that opportunity.<\/p>\n Further reading: Cutting Room Floor<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t feel like chasing movies like that is going to lead to a 40-year career,\u201d he reasoned. \u201cI\u2019d rather be broke.\u201d You can see the irony, considering \u2018The Kid\u2019 was eventually played by Leonardo DiCaprio<\/a>, one of the biggest and most bankable stars of Damon\u2019s generation, who\u2019s not too far away from celebrating the 40th anniversary of his career, and he\u2019s been a very big deal for most of it.<\/p>\n The Quick and the Dead might have had to wait a while to be reappraised as a cult classic, but it still fared better than Damon\u2019s only contributions to cinema in 1995, with the actor making a non-speaking cameo appearance in the forgotten independent comedy, Glory Daze.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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