Matt Damon unveiled 'ruthless' nature of Hollywood

Matt Damon is reflecting on how the pressures of Hollywood have shaped his role as a father.

In a new interview with GQ, the 55‑year‑old actor — set to play Odysseus in Christopher Nolan’s upcoming The Odyssey — spoke candidly about the uncertainty of the entertainment industry and the sacrifices that come with it while raising his four daughters.

“There’s less of that kind of young person’s engine of needing to prove something and more about, like, accepting work and doing it on your terms and doing it as precisely and as well as you can. I think about it a lot, especially as my kids are getting older: really trying to be here now,” said Damon, father to Isabella, 19, Gia, 17, Stella, 15, and Alexia, 26. “And it’s hard for me to do that.”

“I think maybe that has to do with my own nature,” he continued. “It also has to do with this career where you’re always trying to figure out what’s ahead, because it’s such an uncertain business and a pretty ruthless one. Those kinds of things have conspired to, I think, maybe take me out of where I am, more than I’d like.”

Damon’s career began at 18 with a one‑line role in Mystic Pizza. His breakout came in 1997 with Good Will Hunting, co‑written and co‑starring Ben Affleck. “I don’t think either of us stopped for years,” he recalled. “I mean, I think I worked five straight years, literally out of these two duffel bags that I had. And I traveled everywhere and just literally would go from set to set. And I loved it. It was great. I loved what I was doing. I didn’t want to stop. There’s that insecurity of actors of like, the phone’s going to stop ringing.”

“There’s that list that you hear about, and you never know,” he continued. “I mean, you know if you’re on it if your phone’s ringing a lot, but you don’t…. There’s no official list, but there is—sometimes you can get a movie greenlit at a studio, but not at another studio, and you’re really aware of that. I’ve always been really aware of that.”

Fatherhood, however, has given him new perspective. “I feel like fatherhood has made my job a lot easier in a lot of ways,” Damon told Fatherly in 2021. “All those emotions that I used to have to reach for are just readily accessible. I don’t have to twist myself into knots to find something—it’s just sitting right there all the time.”

In recent years, Damon has slowed down, prioritizing family and his production company with Affleck, Artists Equity. “My youngest is a freshman, and I’ve been through this a few times and I know how quickly these years go,” he told GQ.

Still, Nolan’s The Odyssey was a project he couldn’t resist. “It’s a little bewildering,” Damon admitted. “Because of where the movie business is going, it was a really weird movie for me personally, in the sense that I had almost a nostalgic feeling the entire time I was making it, because it felt like movies were when I started working. And I know that that’s going away. I knew that this was the last chance I was ever going to have to do something like this.”

On parenting, Damon shared his perspective during Travis and Jason Kelce’s New Heights podcast: “Your kids show up—like that spirit that soul is there, and it’s going to do what it’s going to do. The nurture part is very important; you’re going to be helping with that, but they really are who they are right away.”

As for his advice to other parents? “Don’t blink,” he told the Kelce brothers.