It’s been almost a decade since Matt Damon appeared on the big screen as Jason Bourne, the super spy with a less-than-super memory. That’s about to change with the release of Jason Bourne, and according to Damon and his director, Paul Greengrass, that long gap between movies required the actor to spend some long hours at the gym.
Damon and Greengrass sat down for an in-depth inteverview with The Guardian about their decision to return to the franchise, which both of them had previously said they would never do after the release of 2007’s The Bourne Ultimatum. According to the pair, it was Damon and editor Christopher Rouse who convinced Greengrass to give the series another go, focusing on how much the world had changed since the last film, particularly in the technological and surveillance sectors. But one thing Damon and Greengrass didn’t want to change much was Bourne himself — and that required some serious dedication on Damon’s part.
“Paul said early on, ‘Look, if we open the film and in the first frame of Jason Bourne we see your face and you look like you’ve lived well these past 10 years, we do not have a movie,'” Damon explained to The Guardian. “‘You have to look like you’ve suffered. And the only way to do that is to suffer.'”
The actor’s “brutal” regimen, as Greengrass put it, included two 90-minute gym sessions per day over the course of 10 weeks, and a strict, months-long diet that limited Damon’s intake to proteins and vegetables only.
“It was a statement of intent,” Greengrass told The Guardian. “Sadly, he had to make it.”
Not-so-sadly for audiences, all those long hours at the gym paid off, if that shirtless set photo featuring a buff-as-hell Damon is any indication. And the actor’s dedication to his physique is especially important in light of the fact that Bourne doesn’t talk much in this installment, uttering fewer lines in this film than in any other in the franchise, according to The Guardian. (As Vanity Fair points out, that lack of loquaciousness means it’s likely that Damon made about $1 million per line of dialogue for Bourne.) But putting harsh workout regimens and jaw-dropping paychecks aside, both Damon and Greengrass are leaving the door wide open for another Bourne reunion down the road.
“I’m not going to make the mistake of saying ‘never’, like I did before,” Greengrass told The Guardian. ” …It’s got to continue.”
(Via: The Guardian)
