Bourne, Batman and The Joker

Matt Damon and Christian Bale are on the cover of British GQ‘s November 2019 issue, out on October 4, and Joaquin Phoenix is on the cover of Vanity Fair‘s November 2019 issue, out now, and what they say about Hollywood, money, fame and regret might shock you.

In the current issue of Britsh GQ, actor Matt Damon reveals that he gave up a quarter of a billion dollars by turning down the leading role in James Cameron’s sci-fi 2009 smash Avatar. #OMG

“Jim Cameron offered me Avatar. And when he offered it to me, he goes, ‘Now, listen. I don’t need anybody. I don’t need a name for this, a named actor. If you don’t take this, I’m gonna find an unknown actor and give it to him, because the movie doesn’t really need you. But if you take the part, I’ll give you 10 percent of [Avatar profits]…I told John Krasinski this story when we were writing Promised Land…he goes, ‘If you had done that movie, nothing in your life would be different. Nothing in your life would be different at all. Except that, right now, we would be having this conversation in space.’ So, yeah. I’ve left more money on the table than any actor actually. [GQ has since done the sums on this: Damon could have been a quarter of a billion dollars up].”

On Damon's bigger regret:

“I mean, the bigger thing still to this day, my bigger regret is – it would have caused a problem for Paul Greengrass and for all my friends on The Bourne Ultimatum, so I couldn’t do it – but Cameron said to me in the course of that conversation, ‘Well, you know, I’ve only made six movies.’ I didn’t realize that. He works so infrequently, but his movies, you know all of them. So it feels like he’s made more than he has. I realized in having to say no that I was probably passing on the chance to ever work with him. So that sucked and that’s still brutal. But my kids are all eating. I’m doing OK.”

Christian Bale on his acting technique:

“One of [my] first jobs ever was with Rowan Atkinson and I think I look at him as the template. He was playing…The Nerd, it was called, by Larry Shue. He would come out, we’d say hello, but he didn’t really socialize. None of us knew him – it was before he did Mr. Bean. And he would just become this character, but before he went on stage. And I would just watch him; I would see him becoming a character. I was mesmerized. And then he just stayed in character for the whole night. And it wasn’t until the whole thing was finished that he invited me to say hello and that I actually spoke to him for the first time. It dawned on me that was my learning phase. I went, ‘Oh, that’s how it’s done then, is it? OK, great.’”

For more from Matt Damon and Christian Bale, click HERE.

If The Joker is more your thing, then pick up a copy of the latest Vanity Fair for their interview with Joaquin Phoenix. Here are a few snippets:

On taking the role:

“I was going through [the script] and I realized, I said, ‘Well, why would we make something, like, where you sympathize or empathize with this villain?’ It’s like, because that’s what we have to do. It’s so easy for us to—we want the simple answers, we want to vilify people. It allows us to feel good if we can identify that as evil. ‘Well, I’m not racist ’cause I don’t have a Confederate flag or go with this protest.’ It allows us to feel that way, but that’s not healthy because we’re not really examining our inherent racism that most white people have, certainly. Or whatever it may be. Whatever issues you may have. It’s too easy for us and I felt like, yeah, we should explore this villain. This malevolent person.”

On fiancee Rooney Mara:

“She’s the only girl I ever looked up on the internet. We were just friends, email friends. I’d never done that. Never looked up a girl online.”

On not wanting to discuss the death of his brother, River Phoenix, during the promotion of Walk the Line: 

“Because I came out publicly as an actor at that time, I suddenly was confronted with having to talk about something that already was very public, in the public sphere, where you’re in a five-minute interview, every five minutes and everything, at a f–king junket. It felt like, ‘Well, I’m not sure this is the right place and it feels insincere to be talking about this and I can hear in your voice that you’re trying to sound like somebody who really cares and is interested, but let’s be f–king frank about what’s happening here.’ It was just much easier to go, ‘F–k you,’ which is an easier thing for me for whatever reason, than to explain it.”

For more from Joaquin, click HERE.

We ❤️ these in-depth interviews with some of the greatest actors of this generation. Be sure to pick up your copy of the magazines.