Matt Damon revisits haunting decision to turn down Avatar
Matt Damon was "desperate" to work with James Cameron on Avatar, but it was not to be
Yes, Matt Damon turned down James Cameron’s Avatar. Yes, he would’ve gotten 10% of the back end of the movie, which would have taken him from rich to really really rich. But at least he got his favorite anecdote out of it, which is that John Krasinski, upon finding out, told him “Nothing in your life would be different today if you had done that movie, except you and I would be having this conversation in space.” (Questionable: Even Jeff Bezos still hangs out mostly on Earth.)
“I had a contract,” Damon patiently explains after being asked, once again, about missing that big ol’ payday in an interview with Chris Wallace (via Variety). “I was in the middle of shooting the Bourne movie and I knew that we were going to need work at the end and I had to get it all the way to the finish line and I would have to leave the movie kind of early and leave them in the lurch a little bit and I didn’t want to do that. I desperately wanted to work with Cameron. I mean, because he worked so rarely.”
“I’m sure it’s the most money an actor ever turned down, you know?” The Oppenheimer star speculates. Hindsight is 20/20, but even if he had known that Avatar was going to be one of the biggest films of all time, “I don’t know how I could have left all my friends in the lurch. You know what I mean?” And anyway, it’s not like the Bourne franchise left Damon in the poor house. As he asserts, “I would have been the same guy, I just would have had a space station.” (Once again, questionable, but whatever helps you sleep at night.)