Matt Damon prepared for iconic role by quietly working in a bar for free
Method acting, a technique where actors practice extreme character immersion to produce ‘better’ performances, has been lambasted as ‘f***ing annoying’ by Brian Cox, and ‘a narcissistic, kind of self-indulgent thing’ by Marvel’s Sebastian Stan.
And while some stars understandably take it too far, producing on-set toxicity and egregious disruption, others, including Matt Damon, have successfully used the method to enrich their portrayal.
The 55-year-old, who will step out as a flesh-and-blood version of Homeric hero Odysseus in Christopher Nolan’s cinematic retelling of The Odyssey this summer, previously admitted to moving to a landlocked American state to perfect his accent for 1997’s The Rainmaker.
Francis Ford Coppola’s award-winning legal drama saw Damon portraying recent Memphis State University Law School graduate, Rudy Baylor.
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Realising he had no work prospects, the protagonist began working at Yogi’s bar, where he eventually met ambulance chaser J. Lyman ‘Bruiser’ Stone (played by Mickey Rourke), who hired him as an associate.
After passing the Tennessee bar exam, Baylor opened his own practice with a fellow Bruiser associate, Deck Shifflet (Danny DeVito), eventually taking on a corrupt, billion-dollar insurance company that denied life-saving medical coverage to a boy with cancer.
Ahead of the film, based on the 1995 novel by John Grisham, the father of three upped sticks to Knoxville, Tennessee, where he worked in a bar for one specific reason: to learn the native twang.
“I bartended down in Knoxville, Tennessee to pick up an accent and I did that for, like a month,” Damon said in a GQ interview with fellow Odyssey stars Robert Pattinson and Tom Holland.
He told the famous pair that The Rainmaker was a ‘big break’ for him and he had a month to ‘kill’ before he started shooting.
“We were going to have three weeks of rehearsals in Napa Valley where [Coppola] lived so I moved to Knoxville and I told the manager, this woman, what I was doing.
“So I was an extra bartender for her at no charge, right? I was like ‘I’ll give all my tips to these guys and I just need to be here’.”
The Good Will Hunting favourite was asked by Holland, 30, if he found the method-won accent hard to ‘shake’, to which he replied: “I have a really time with accents in America, they just come very naturally to me.”
He claimed he had a ‘pretty neutral starting place’ with his Bostonian accent and that he found it easy to ‘jump off’ into different directions’.
“Going abroad is much harder for me,” Damon claimed.
The Odyssey is scheduled to be released in cinemas worldwide on 17 July.
Other actors who took on hospitality job roles
Tom Holland
Interestingly, Holland has also previously moonlighted as a bartender in order to better prepare himself for a role.
Before starring as Nathan Drake in the 2022 adaptation of Uncharted, he worked as a bartender at the Chiltern Firehouse in London.
He told GQ he would ‘would come in to do shifts with the staff, learning how to mix cocktails, practice trick pours, toss bottles around’.
Tom Cruise
In the 1988 classic Cocktail, Tom Cruise plays cocky New York native Brian Flanagan, a US Army veteran who works as a bartender whilst attending business school.
Ahead of production, Cruise trained with former TGI Fridays bartender John Brandy to learn the art of flair, as per The Takeout.
Ted Danson
Ahead of filming Cheers, the beloved NBC sitcom, The Good Place’s Ted Danson took a professional bartending course to prepare for his role as Sam Malone.
"I went to bartender's school before Cheers. I learned how to mix drinks.But I learned very quickly the jokes play better from the waist up,” he said, as per CBS.
“They never watched me make my wonderful drinks so I gave up and peeled lemons.”
He added that he had a ‘soft spot in his heart for bartenders’ after playing one for so long.
Topics: Celebrity, TV and Film, News, Drinks
Ella Scott