CELEBRITY PORTRAIT

Photography by
Larry Armstrong/Corbis Outline

Bourne Winner
Matt Damon
on Poker, Fatherhood and
How Clooney
Can’t Play Cards
by Shep Morgan

Matt Damon won big this summer, but not at the poker tables in Las Vegas; there, he exited early after playing alongside his buddy Ben Affleck in the Ante Up for Africa celebrity poker tournament. It was on the big screen that Damon held a pair of aces, scoring at the box office in both Ocean’s Thirteen and The Bourne Ultimatum. Damon is firmly on the hot list in Hollywood, but he’s obviously just as excited about his new real-life role as a father.

“I think being a parent changes everything about you,” Damon said, grinning at the impact his daughter Isabella has had on his life. “It’s something you don’t understand until you have kids. I find it amazing to watch her because everything changes so quickly. It seemed like Isabella suddenly learned to walk in the blink of an eye. All these new stages are happening at warp speed. We’ve already decided we want more children.”

It was just two years ago that Damon walked down the aisle with Luciana Barroso, who has an eight-year-old daughter from a previous relationship, in a secret ceremony held in New York City Hall. “We just wanted to nip all the rumors in the bud,” he explained. “It was a very nice little ceremony with no fanfare, but Mayor Bloomberg was there.”

Obscurity to Stardom
Damon admits he can’t wait to leave a movie set and spend time with his family. “I realized it when I was getting ready to do The Bourne Ultimatum,” Damon said with a chuckle. “On the first two [movies in the trilogy], I’d film all day and then head for the gym so I’d be in shape for the next round of running and jumping. This time, I went straight home to be with my kid, so my workout routine was definitely suffering, and I gained some weight. We’d be doing a really tough action scene, and I’d say to the director, Paul Greengrass, ‘Dude, you’ve got to cut me a little slack because I’m twenty pounds heavier.’ ”

While he hedges on whether he’ll ever return to the screen as Jason Bourne, he doesn’t deny that playing the enigmatic assassin who’s searching for his identity changed his future. “Before I did Bourne Identity, no one had offered me a movie in six months,” he recalled. “After it opened, my phone was ringing off the hook. Suddenly, the door was opening for me, and I was doing films like Ocean’s Eleven, Syriana and The Departed.”



 
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