Matt Damon’s Battle Behind the Camera: Navigating Depression during a ‘Losing Effort

While promoting “Oppenheimer,” Matt Damon revealed on “Jake’s Takes” that he once “fell into depression” while shooting a movie that didn’t work out the way he expected when.

“Without naming any particular movies…sometimes you find yourself in a movie that you know, perhaps, might not be what you had hoped it would be, and you’re still making it,” Damon said.

“And I remember halfway through production and you’ve still got months to go and you’ve taken your family somewhere, you know, and you’ve inconvenienced them, and I remember my wife pulling me up because I fell into a depression about like, what have I done?” He continued.

“She just said, “We’re here now.” Damon said, “You know, and it was like…I do pride myself, in a large part because of her, at being a professional actor and what being a professional actor means is you go and you do the 15-hour day and give it absolutely everything, even in what you know is going to be a losing effort.”

American actor added, “If you can do that with the best possible attitude, then you’re a pro, and she really helped me with that.”

Damon didn’t name the movie when he was depressed, but he has spoken openly in the past about knowing that acting in films was going toward destruction.

Matt Damon talked about 2016 The Great Wall

One of the films was “The Great Wall”, a poorly reviewed 2016 monster film which was directed by Zhang Yimou. Matt Damon stars as a European mercenary who is forced to team up with the Imperial Chinese Army to fend off an alien threat.

Despite a production budget of $150 million, the film was released in the U.S. but failed to cross the $50 million mark.

The actor had an appearance on the “WTF” podcast in 2021 and talked about filming of “The Great Wall” movie, “I was like, this is exactly how disasters happen,” Matt Damon continued, “It doesn’t cohere. It doesn’t work as a movie.”

Damon added, “I came to consider that the definition of a professional actor; knowing you’re in a turkey and going, ‘OK, I’ve got four more months.”

“It’s the up-at-dawn siege on Hamburger Hill. I am definitely going to die here, but I’m doing it.’ That’s as shitty as you can feel creatively, I think. I hope to never have that feeling again.”