Matt Damon’s Acting Hiatus Interrupted By Christopher Nolan’s Surprise Oppenheimer Offer: “He Just Calls You Out Of The Blue”

Matt Damon “negotiated” an acting hiatus with his wife — but Christopher Nolan changed his plans.

Speaking in Entertainment Weekly‘s ‘Around the Table’ video interview, Damon said, “This is going to sound made up, but it’s actually true.

“I had — not to get too personal — negotiated extensively with my wife that I was taking time off. I had been in Interstellar, and then Chris put me on ice for a couple of movies, so I wasn’t in the rotation, but I actually negotiated in couples therapy — this is a true story — the one caveat to my taking time off was if Chris Nolan called.

This is without knowing whether or not he was working on anything because he never tells you. He just calls you out of the blue. And so, it was a moment in my household.”

Then, of course, Nolan called about Oppenheimer and offered him the part of General Leslie Groves, the director of the Manhattan Project. Groves who recruited Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) to lead the development of the atomic bomb at Los Alamos.

Damon — who has Isabella, 17, Gia, 13, and Stella, 12, with wife Luciana Barroso and is stepfather to 24-year-old Alexia, Luciana’s daughter from a previous relationship — is joined by Nolan and co-stars Murphy, Emily Blunt and Robert Downey Jr in the video interview.

The Air actor previously revealed that he jumped at the chance to join the project, which centres on J. Robert Oppenheimer, the theoretical physicist who helped to develop the first nuclear weapons.

He told The Hollywood Reporter: “[Christopher] said to me, ‘This is the kind of movie that they used to make in the ’90s.’

“It feels like when an Oliver Stone movie would come out and you’d go, ‘That’s one of the movies I’m going to see this year no matter what, because everyone’s going to be talking about it.’ But those movies have disappeared from the multiplex.”

Watch the Entertainment Weekly interview here: https://youtu.be/jF2q-PsLVFI