Matt Damon explains conflict which forced him to reject Avatar role offering highest payday in acting history

Matt Damon has opened up on why he decided to reject possibly the highest payday in acting history.

Let's get one thing straight, the 52-year-old has had incredible success - from winning the Academy Award for Best Screenplay on Good Will Hunting alongside Ben Affleck, to working with the greatest directors of our time - Spielberg, Scorsese, Coppola, to name a few.

Despite such a stellar career at the top of Hollywood, there is one role 'he had to regretfully decline', according to James Cameron, who was trying to get Damon on board for what would be the highest-grossing movie of all time.

Cameron’s 2009 space epic Avatar did a mega $2.9 billion worldwide.

Damon was forced to turn down the film, which offered him 10 percent of the box office back end, which would’ve meant a cool $250 million payday.

I'm sure the actor isn't short for cash but I think $250 million for one job is enough to raise anyone's eyebrows.

To put things into context, Damon currently has a reported net worth of $170 million, which dwarfs Avatar's payday.

In a recent interview with CNN anchor Chris Wallace, Damon admits that he lost out on 'the most money an actor ever turned down'.

Although he does have a pretty good reason.

“I’m sure it’s the most money an actor ever turned down, you know?” Damon said.

The Bourne franchise ended up doing pretty well, anyway. Credit Universal Pictures

“I 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’t want to do that.

“I desperately wanted to work with Cameron. I mean, because he worked so rarely.

“I don’t know how I could have left all my friends in the lurch.

“You know what I mean?”

For that amount of money you could just buy new friends, to be fair, but it's nice to see his morals were in the right place.

20th Century Fox

“I told John Krasinski, we were writing this little movie a long time ago called Promised Land and we were in my kitchen and it was a Saturday morning and we were on a break and I tell him about Avatar, and he launches himself out of the chair,” Damon continued.

“He starts pacing the kitchen, he goes, ‘Nothing in your life would be different today if you had done that movie, except you and I would be having this conversation in space.'”