You know how it is. One minute you're deciding to take a break from work, the next minute a generational director is calling you, offering you a major role in his upcoming blockbuster. What are you going to do?
OK, so maybe none of us have ever experienced this exact dilemma, but it accurately describes the journey Matt Damon took to becoming Leslie Groves in Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer.
The 52-year-old, who also recently starred in Nike-based biography Air, has recently revealed in an interview with Entertainment Weekly that he was discussing with his wife Luciana Barroso about taking a break from acting.
But there was one condition that Damon negotiated to allow him back in front of the camera before the break was over.
"This is going to sound made up, but it's actually true," Damon explained, "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, 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."
We wonder what happened next...
"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."
So, as a result of said phone call, Damon found himself portraying Groves, the general who oversaw the Manhattan Project, where the United States' atomic bombs were created ahead of being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan at the close of World War Two.
Damon's co-star in the film, Cillian Murphy, who plays the titular Oppenheimer, confirmed that Nolan's method of calling actors out of the blue was in fact his preferred method of approaching them for roles.
"Chris' way of operating is that he just calls you out of the blue. I genuinely had no idea. He said he was making a movie about Oppenheimer and he said, 'I'd like you to play Oppenheimer.' I had to sit down. It was kind of overwhelming."
It is an approach that Nolan says is "a fun way to do it", although it isn't without its problems.
"It means that it's very difficult to call you to go out to dinner or something. Because every time you answer the phone it's like, what is it going to be?", explained the director.
As for Damon, his 2023 isn't over with Oppenheimer. He will also be starring in Ethan Coen's Drive Away Dolls, which is released in September. He is also confirmed to be lending his voice to John Krasinski's Imaginary Friends, although we will have to wait until May 2024 for that one.
Presumably, both of those projects were signed off before his now infamous couples therapy session.
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