Matt Damon planned to take a break from acting when he got a call from Christopher for Oppenheimer
After all this wait, Oppenheimer finally lands in cinemas on Friday 21 July, with the star-studded cast featuring the likes of Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Robert Downey Jr, Florence Pugh and Matt Damon.
However, it has emerged that Damon was actually planning on taking a break from acting when he got the call up from Christopher Nolan.
The 52-year-old plays Lt Leslie Groves in Oppenheimer, the director for the top-secret Manhattan Project during World War II.
Nolan’s hotly-anticipated movie tells the story of American scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer (played by Murphy) and his role in developing the atomic bomb which was used in the second world war – for which earned him the title as the ‘father of the atomic bomb’.
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During an interview with the director and fellow cast members, Damon revealed a career-pausing promise he made to his wife during a couple’s therapy session.
In the conversation for Entertainment Weekly, the Saving Private Ryan actor warned his co-workers: “This is going to sound made up, but it’s actually true.”
The actor, who has been married to Luciana Barroso since 2005, said: “I had – not to get too personal – negotiated extensively with my wife that I was taking time off.
“I had been in Interstellar, and then Chris put me on ice for a couple of movies, so I wasn’t in the rotation," he added, making a joke of Nolan who is known for regularly working with the same actors.
For example, Oppenheimer is Murphy’s sixth movie with the director and Michael Caine has appeared in a whopping eight Nolan pictures.
Damon continued: “But I actually negotiated in couples therapy – this is a true story – the one caveat to my taking time off was if Chris Nolan called.
“This is without knowing whether or not he was working on anything, because he never tells you. He just calls you out of the blue.
“And so, it was a moment in my household.”
In another conversation during Oppenheimer’s press tour, Damon told of falling ‘into a depression’ while working on a movie.
Making the comments on an episode of Jake’s Takes, he said: “I think, without naming any particular movies, that sometimes you find yourself in a movie that you know perhaps might not be what you had hoped it would be and you’re still making it.
“And I remember halfway through production and you’ve still got months to go and you’ve taken your family somewhere, you know, and you’ve inconvenienced them, and I remember my wife pulling me up because I fell into a depression about like, what have I done? She just said, ‘We’re here now’.”
Oppenheimer lands in cinemas this Friday, 21 July.
Topics: Celebrity, Film and TV, Matt Damon, Christopher Nolan
Jess Battison