{"id":806054,"date":"2026-10-18T00:06:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-18T00:06:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/806054\/"},"modified":"2026-10-18T00:06:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-18T00:06:13","slug":"the-role-matt-damon-said-he-deserved-an-oscar-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/806054\/","title":{"rendered":"The role Matt Damon said he deserved an Oscar for"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Matt<\/p>\n

Credit: Far Out \/ YouTube Still<\/p>\n

Sat 17 October 2026 21:18, UK <\/p>\n

Winning an Academy Award is the pinnacle of any actor or filmmaker\u2019s career, but even though he\u2019s already got one taking pride of place in his trophy cabinet, Matt Damon<\/a> was adamant that he was the victim of an egregious snub when one of his performances didn\u2019t even get a nomination.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s allowed to think that, even though there\u2019s obviously plenty of bias in a performer singling out one of their own turns as being an oversight on the Academy\u2019s part, but there\u2019s at least one Hollywood heavyweight who would absolutely agree that his name should have been among the five contenders.<\/p>\n

Of course, Damon didn\u2019t waste any time in racing to the crowning achievement of his professional life, winning his only Oscar at the first time of asking. Yes, he came up empty-handed when As Good As It Gets\u2018 Jack Nicholson beat him to \u2018Best Actor\u2019, but by the time the icon claimed his third statue, Good Will Hunting\u2018s Bostonian BFFs had already accepted their \u2018Best Original Screenplay\u2019 prize.<\/p>\n

Since then, he hasn\u2019t troubled the ceremony too often. He was nominated for \u2018Best Supporting Actor\u2019 in Clint Eastwood\u2019s Invictus, but nobody else stood a chance against Inglourious Basterds\u2018 Christoph Waltz, and the same can be said of his \u2018Best Actor\u2019-nominated outing in Ridley Scott\u2019s The Martian, because nobody else other than The Revenant\u2018s Leonardo DiCaprio was taking home the performative bacon.<\/p>\n

His role as the producer of Kenneth Lonergan\u2019s Manchester by the Sea, a movie on which he had final cut<\/a> for some reason, also netted him a \u2018Best Picture\u2019 nod, but nobody remembers that because the Moonlight\/La La Land fiasco was the only talking point about that year\u2019s race for the most prestigious accolade.<\/p>\n

Not to sound too harsh, but apart from the Oscar he won for Good Will Hunting, Damon didn\u2019t stand a chance at winning any of the others, so he shouldn\u2019t be too disheartened. Will he be the front-runner for his performance in Christopher Nolan\u2019s The Odyssey? Perhaps, but it\u2019s far too early to tell, and there\u2019s a high chance that Tom Cruise will be the odds-on favourite for Alejandro G I\u00f1\u00e1rritu\u2019s next effort, should it live up to expectations.<\/p>\n

However, back when he was still a jobbing up-and-comer, before Good Will Hunting and Saving Private Ryan, and even before The Talented Mr Ripley, a relatively unknown Damon gave a performance that made the most of its limited minutes to such an extent that Denzel Washington was completely blown away<\/a>, and he maintained that his brief contributions as Andrew Ilario may have been overlooked.<\/p>\n

Further reading: Cutting Room Floor<\/p>\n

\u201cActually, I think my performance in Courage Under Fire was worth at least an Oscar nomination,\u201d he told Wild About Movies<\/a>, reflecting on why he\u2019s never felt the need to chase blatant awards bait. \u201cBut you don\u2019t make movies thinking you\u2019re going to get a nomination or win an award. You make them based on your intuition. Is the movie a quality picture on the page? Do you think it\u2019s going to transfer well to the screen?\u201d<\/p>\n

Not only did he not get a nomination for his efforts, but when the movie was released, and he discovered that he wasn\u2019t being singled out for the special praise he was utterly convinced that he deserved, Damon was so distraught that he was ready to give up acting altogether<\/a>, and the whole thing sounds like a bit of a hissy fit, really.<\/p>\n

After all, it was Courage Under Fire that got him on Steven Spielberg\u2019s radar and ultimately landed him the title role in Saving Private Ryan, so it\u2019s not as if it was all for nothing. Any actor who thinks they deserve an Oscar nod faces more than a 50\/50 chance of being left disappointed, and as good as he was, the short-term pain, personally and professionally, was more than worth it in the long run.<\/p>\n

He definitely suffered for his art, losing so much weight that it took him years to recover, but did he deserve to replace either Jerry Maguire\u2018s Cuba Gooding Jr, Fargo\u2018s William H Macy, Primal Fear\u2018s Edward Norton, Ghosts of Mississippi\u2018s James Woods, or Shine\u2018s Armin Mueller-Stahl among the five? You know what, maybe, and Damon would probably kick Norton out<\/a> of the running since he auditioned for that part and didn\u2019t get it.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

ADD AS A PREFERRED SOURCE ON GOOGLE \"\"\/ <\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Credit: Far Out \/ YouTube Still Sat 17 October 2026 21:18, UK Winning an Academy Award is the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":806055,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[32677,206451,163823,6491,96,2828,33357,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-806054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-1990s","tag-206451","tag-academy-awards","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-matt-damon","tag-oscars","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=806054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806054\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/806055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=806054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=806054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=806054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}