By Shawn Adler in Los Angeles

A certain A-list actress whose name I won’t mention once came up to me in Los Angeles and said I looked like a “fat Matt Damon.” First off, that is ridiculous. Secondly, I think it may be the greatest compliment I’ve ever received.

Damon (left), Adler (right)

Now, she wasn’t the first person to say that since "Good Will Hunting" came out, but then again, since "Good Will Hunting" came out I’ve been trying to look like Matt Damon (with, it should be noted, only moderate success.) Whatever the veracity of the comparison, I admit now to being its source on more than one occasion.

Well, what exactly do you say to the celebrity people claim you resemble the most? To the man who not only starred in but also wrote your all-time favorite movie? To the actor who’s about to release another great film in a string of great films?

You say please and thank-you, that’s what.

Matt recently sat down with Cinema Confidential in Los Angeles to discuss his work on "The Bourne Supremacy," and to prove, although unwittingly, that I am completely delusional.

Thank you and goodnight.

Q: How have you approached success?

MATT: I dunno. It’s weird to talk about my career in terms of success. Really recently - right before The Bourne Identity came out - I hadn’t been offered a movie in a year. "The Legend Of Bagger Vance" had come out and bombed and "All The Pretty Horses" had come out and bombed, and the word on "The Bourne Identity" was that it was going to tank also because we had pushed back the release date a couple of times. For people who know that’s always a sign that things aren’t going well when in fact we were given more money to go back and reshoot and pick up a couple of things that we needed. We were making the movie a lot better, so we were holding the movie for the right reasons. But the outward signals within the industry were, “Oh god, this thing’s going to suck.” Nobody called and gave me job offers for quite some time, so I went and did a play in London and we closed on a Saturday night. Bourne had opened that Friday, and by the time I got back to New York Sunday night, Monday morning there were something like thirty script offers. So in terms of any success I’ve had, it’s always been tenuous. I don’t think anyone really feels secure.

Q: How about your philosophy in picking roles?

MATT: I guess in terms of picking jobs, whatever philosophy I have hasn’t really changed. At first, around the time of doing one line in "Chasing Amy," it was take any job I could get, but since "Good Will Hunting," I’ve been offered movies rather than having to go and hustle and audition for them.

It’s basically been just three things that I look for. It’s always just a script that I like, a good director and a good role. And usually I settle for any two of those. The combination of all three is really hard to come by. I had all three with a movie like Ripley: it was a great script, and a great director, and a really great role in a kind of different thing from what I normally get the chance to do. So my philosophy really hasn’t changed, and whatever success or failures I’ve had have always been with those kinds of things in mind. I mean movies that didn’t do well at all like "All The Pretty Horses" – there’s a version of that movie that exists that’s Billy Bob’s cut of it that I really do love, and I’m really happy that I did that movie. I’m still really proud of that movie in that form that nobody ever saw. But still the process of doing it and all that stuff I got a lot out of it.

Q: Is there any truth to the rumor that you and Ben are working on another project?

MATT: Well, I think the one Ben’s talking about right now is the Dennis Lehane novel he had, "Gone Baby Gone." He’s got the rights for that one, but I don’t really know what’s going on with that right now. A lot depends on whether he wants to be in it or wants to direct it or where his head is. But I’ve been so busy doing all these other movies that we haven’t had a chance to sit down and do any writing for some time. But I saw him last night. It’s something we talk about every time we see each other. We want to do it, but it’s just a matter of handling the logistics, and finding a way to get us in the same place at the same time. One of the things is having struggled for work for so long - it’s about seven years that we’ve both been working consistently - having struggled for so long through our teens and early twenties, it’s kind of an [against our natures] to turn down work. We’ll have to do to try to write something. We’ll just have to block out the time.

For both of us probably the most creatively fulfilling experience was "Good Will Hunting," just because we took an idea from its very beginning, and shepherded it all the way through until it was a film. And that’s just incredibly fulfilling to do. Even if -

(At this point the tape recorder stops. Matt stops talking, flips the tape to the other side, and hits record.)

Q: Thank you.

MATT: That’s how we used to write actually. We’d improvise all the scenes so I’m used to those little guys. But even right now, we’re having a lot of creative input with the directors we work with. And it is a collaborative feeling, taking a movie like Bourne, I was really involved in a lot of ways, but at the end of the day, it’s the director’s vision and it’s got to be. There’s no getting around that you’re kind of hired labor. So in terms of writing and taking something all the way from the beginning to kind of finished form is a feeling I think we both want to have again.

Q: You are sort of cast against type in these films. Can you talk about that and also how you prepared for the role?

MATT: It was a big concern when I took the job the first time and it was something that Doug Liman, the director of the first movie, and I talked a lot about. He thought it was really daring to cast me as this guy because of the way I look. I look so young and this guy clearly has to have a history. He’s got a very dark past, and people don’t look at me and necessarily think that. So there was a lot of stuff physically in terms of getting ready. We just looked at every different aspect of how to kind of make this guy as believable as possible. The worst thing that could happen would be if you had a good movie but the central character is just not quite believable. He [would be] constantly taking your audience out of the movie. That’s a complete disaster. The movie would just fall apart, so Doug came up with certain things. Like he watched boxing on television and he liked the way boxers walked. There was a directness, and efficiency, and a kind of security in their bodies, and this kind of forward momentum that he really liked.

So I boxed for about six months before the movie, and that really helped. I found that just the way you move around other people - and it’s a very subtle thing - but I think the sum total of a lot of those little subtleties add up to making something believable or not.

There was that moment in the first one where he picks up a gun for the first time and he throws it down. What it said in the screenplay direction was that it “feels so comfortable in his hand that he throws it down,” and from that moment on, any time he’s holding a gun, it’s got to look like an extension of his arm. The only way to get around that was just to go to the firing range and just put in hundreds of hours, so I didn’t have to think about the gun. It was just there and it would never be pointed at anything I wasn’t prepared to destroy.

For instance: If you see a cop off duty at a bar and you’re having a conversation, you know he’s a cop because he’ll angle his body. They’ll angle their right hip away if they’re right-handed even if they’re not wearing a gun. This is how they talk to someone. “This [a gun] is incredibly deadly and harmful.” You keep that away and keep a distance, and it’s always available to you and not to them. It’s little things like that that add up throughout the course of a movie. If you just see somebody’s body moving in a certain way, suddenly they’re more believable.

The other theory, which we applied to this one also, was that as many of the kind of things - whether a fight sequence or something like that – it was really important to have me doing it. Because audiences are smart enough to know when you cut to the wide shot of the stunt man doing it, it’s a giveaway. Even if they can’t put their finger on it, it’s just something that takes them out of the movie a little bit. It was working on all that stuff to make sure that I could do it and the other actor could do it in a way that looked real and credible and kind of kept the illusion afloat.

Q: Would you say the physical aspect was the biggest challenge for you?

MATT: One of the biggest challenges starting out as an acting thing was that I don’t talk a lot in the movie. That was another thing I really liked about it. Reading the script I only had about four scenes in the movie where I speak, but I’m on screen for a lot of the movie, so that was a huge challenge. It’s a pretty dark journey the guy goes on. I’d go home at night and unwind a little bit, get on the phone or talk to people, you know, rejoin humanity for the evenings. It’s a pretty heavy role this time around. Normally you look for the contradictions and have some scenes of levity, but in this case it was pretty intense most of the way through, so that was kind of a challenge.

Q: What do you make of the appeal of this film, with such a great anti-hero as the lead character?

MATT: There was no reason to make it unless we could make it better than the first one or as good as the first one, and when I heard the three major tent pole ideas in this one I really liked…I don’t know how you write about this without giving it away, but -

(MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD: DO NOT READ FURTHER UNTIL YOU SEE THE FILM)

In the first act where she [Marie] dies in a really brutal way - this character that we went to great lengths to and had great fights to cast in the first movie. We did all this work to establish this relationship and create this little ray of hope in this guy’s life, and she’s murdered basically. So that’s the big moment in the first act that hopefully is somewhat bold and will be surprising for people.

In the second act, I shoot a woman in the face just completely in cold blood, and as an audience you sit there and see your central character do this horrible, horrible thing.

And then in the third act I go to apologize to this young woman, having learned what I’ve learned about loss in my own life, having visited humanity for these years with this relationship I’ve had and understanding what it means to have that taken from you.

You can’t write about any of that!

(END OF SPOILERS)

Q: Well, can you talk about being an anti-hero?

MATT: Basically what I liked about it was putting out in a mainstream movie a feeling that [when] something terribly wrong happens to you, your first instinct is to go to get revenge, but if you just sit back and think about it, and you start to look at yourself in your own life and take responsibility for your own actions, the most important thing you do to rejoin the human race is to start atoning for the things that you’ve done. And the last shot of the movie is him walking and rejoining a sea of humanity in New York City of all places. That was the first time we’d ever seen him in this country, so that was one of the things that I thought was a good thing to put out there right now, and I hope people accept that. Who knows what the reaction to the movie is going to be? But that was the reason for me to do the movie in this day and age. I thought a good thing to put out there, to take someone whom we’ve established as the ultimate American machine, whatever, that that’s the realization he comes to, and at the end he does a very powerful thing. He does the only thing that he can, which is to attempt to atone and start to redeem himself.

Q: Have you seen Matt and Ben the play?

MATT: I haven’t seen it. I don’t know. Some people have said it’s funny. Some people have said it’s kind of a knock. I don’t know. I just figure it’s like an extension of "Project Greenlight" - a chance to give people a job.

Q: Will you be in another Kevin Smith movie anytime soon?

MATT: Well, I was in "Jersey Girl." I had one scene in "Jersey Girl." I’m always ready to do whatever Kevin wants. He’s normally very good about getting me something to do in his movies, and sometimes, like in the case of "Dogma," he gives me a big role. Maybe a role will come out that he offers to me. And the second he does I’ll take it.

Q: What can you say about "Ocean’s Twelve"?

MATT: We’re 75 % of the way through. We just came back from Europe and we’re finishing it up at Warner Brothers. It’s been going great so far. Everyone’s back for this one plus Catherine Zeta Jones has a great role. There are a few celebrity surprises.

"The Bourne Supremacy" opens in theaters July 23rd.