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Why the wait before you could make the movie?

Matt Damon: We had it for seven years; Scott [Z Burns, screenwriter] wrote it seven years ago and we were kind of sitting with it, so it was actually more like a play in the sense that it's really well written. We would refer back to it once or twice a year. Steven [Soderbergh, director] and I worked together three times in those intervening years and we'd always say: "Yeah, I read it again last night. It's still really good." And so, in that sense, we'd examined it enough that all the answers we needed were in the actual text, like when you do a play.

You gained 30 pounds for this role. What was the motivation for transforming yourself like that?

Matt Damon: Once Steven made the decision to take it in a more comic direction tonally, for all of us it became less important to do kind of rigorous character studies of the actual people, and it was more about having fun with this terrific script. I sent Steven an email about two months out, when we were finally getting ready to do it after all this time, and I said: "What do you want this guy to look like physically?" I sent him this whole long email and it ended with that. And he just wrote back: "Doughy." So that was it. Those were my marching orders. I didn't question it; I just started eating. [Laughs] There's actually a little prosthetic piece of my nose as well. Steven's idea was he didn't want any hard edges to the character. He wanted him kind of undefined, in a way. You can't quite pin him down. So it's kind of a metaphor for who he actually is as a character in the movie.

How did that extra weight make you feel? Did it change you on a day-to-day basis? Did you feel differently about yourself?

Matt Damon: No, it felt fantastic, actually. I've never had that much fun making a movie, really. I just ate whatever I wanted to and thought about nothing but this screenplay and the other actors. And it was really nice to not think about anything else. Compared to a Jason Bourne movie where it's like, I go home after a day of work and I've got to go to the gym. I just prefer to eat. [Laughs]

And early in your career you lost 30 pounds for a role...

Matt Damon: Yeah, nowhere near as fun as putting it on. [Laughs] Although I did feel differently ultimately. I talked to Robert De Niro before I did it, and he had done it obviously really famously for Raging Bull - he put on 60 pounds. I asked him about it and he said: "Well, the first 15 pounds are really fun." And then he goes: "Then you have to go to work after that." And it was true, almost, because I found the 30 pounds to be really fun. And then kind of towards the end, I was kind of like: "I should kind of get rid of this weight." But I wasn't really that excited about getting rid of it.

You have worked with Steven multiple times. How does the shorthand you develop make the job easier or change the way you approach it?

Matt Damon: It makes it much, much easier to do. And I've been really lucky with the people that I've worked with. If I could just go back and work with the people I've already worked with I'd be really happy. But yes, Steven I've worked with a bunch, more than anyone, actually, and Paul [Greengrass] and Gus [Van Sant], Francis [Coppola] I went back and worked with again and I loved it. I could just repeat those four guys. And Clint Eastwood I'm going back to work with again. So, those five guys.

The scene that resonates the most as I was watching the film was when the interior monologue almost lets Mark down and he's asked by his wife: "Why don't you just stop this?" Can you elaborate on that moment?

Matt Damon: Yeah, Steven called me before I read the script, when he had read it, and he said: "There is a moment in this movie that is so shocking to us; it's the convergence of the interior monologue." And if you look at the way the film's shot, Steven and other great directors have always said the close-up is the most powerful weapon in your arsenal. And he knew that that was the closest the camera was even going to get to Whitacre, and he reverse engineered everything from there. I love that scene. So, there was a lot of thought that went in, and we talked a lot about that scene. But when we went to shoot it, these two were so emotional, and it was very honest, so I started to do that too. And Steven went: "No, no, no, no." He kind of gave me a line-reading. And the line is: "I think I should probably go back to the hospital." And the line reading ended up being like: "Well, I think I should probably go back to the hospital." [Laughs] So you have these two people who are being just destroyed by this guy, by his illness really. And it's not quite affecting him the same way. Scott Burns had said when he saw that, he was like: "There's no way that's going to be in the movie, that reading." But it actually really works, the convergence of his inside voice and finally facing this reality, and then the two people who are so close to him brought to this point by him. And when Melanie [Lynskey, who plays Whitacre's wife Ginger] just says - it's so simple the way she says it - "Just stop. Just stop." It's so kind of honest. It's a moment we thought a lot about. It was one of the big reasons to make the movie, for that moment.

Was there anything that happened in your life where you had to do major bluffing and it worked out for better or worse?

Matt Damon: Well, we work in the film business, so [laughs] we're on the high wire the whole time, it feels like. I think there's an element that probably everybody - definitely I have, and I know Steven does, and Greg [Jacobs, producer], Scott and Melanie haven't talked about it, but I'm sure they too feel like somebody's going to show up and tell you like: "OK, put that down. Get out of here. What are you doing here? Who let you in here? You know you're not supposed to be in here making movies. Go get a job." So, yeah, I definitely feel like the other shoe might drop at any time, and I've always felt that way.