Ever since breaking into stardom with Good Will Hunting, Matt Damon has had a firm grip
on the Hollywood Good Guy title.
But over the last few years, Damon has seemed more shady than sweet.
Here are some of Damon's sketchiest moments.
Broadcasting the breakup
The first time Matt Damon's nice guy mold cracked was when he announced on The Oprah
Winfrey Show that he was single… without letting his then-girlfriend, Minnie Driver,
know that their relationship was over.
"Cool."
She later told The Los Angeles Times:
"It's unfortunate that Matt went on Oprah.
It seemed like a good forum for him to announce to the world that we were no longer together,
which I found fantastically inappropriate.
Of course, he was busy declaring his love for me on David Letterman a month previously."
Chances are, she did not like those apples.
Casting blame
In 2015, Damon hinted to The Hollywood Reporter that it was all Jennifer Lopez's fault that
his best buddy, Ben Affleck, had a bad reputation in the mid-to-late 2000s.
He said:
"There's nobody who's more misunderstood.
Ten years ago, the public image of him could not have been farther apart from who he actually
is.
It was like he was being cast in a role, that he was a talentless kind of meathead, with
his whole relationship with Jennifer Lopez.
He just got cast as this person that he wasn't.
It was just really painful."
Of course, Lopez was only one half of the infamous "Bennifer," so it was pretty unfair
of him to put all the blame for Affleck's poor reception on her.
After all, it was him who actively chose to star in Gigli.
But J.LO got her revenge in her own subtle way soon after.
"Matt Damon's beard from The Martian."
"Eew, so fake!"
Tone-deaf takes
Perhaps the most maligned aspect of Damon's public life is his untreated case of foot-in-mouth
syndrome.
Because time and time again, the actor seems to ruffle feathers with his controversial
comments, but still keeps right on talking about hot button issues anyway.
For example, in 2015, Damon came under fire after he told filmmaker Effie Brown that diversity
doesn't matter behind a camera, only in front of it during an episode of Project Greenlight.
"When we're talking about diversity, you do it in the casting of the film, not in the
casting of the show."
"WOOH."
It didn't help matters much that just a couple of years later, the actor was ensnared in
a cinematic whitewashing controversy by starring in The Great Wall, a film centered mainly
in medieval China.
But this goes far beyond his poor understanding of racial issues in Hollywood.
He also insulted the LGBTQ community by refusing to address homosexuality rumors about himself
and Ben Affleck, and implying that actors shouldn't come out of the closet so as to
avoid any career slowdowns.
He later attempted to clarify the issue, saying:
"I was just trying to say actors are more effective when they're a mystery…
It's painful when things get said that you don't believe."
But then the hits just kept on coming.
In December, 2017, Damon was asked to comment on the #MeToo movement that was exposing so
much misconduct in Hollywood, including incidents involving Casey and Ben Affleck.
And he angered a lot of survivors and advocates with his choice of words.
For starters, he insisted there was a spectrum of bad behaviors.
"There's a difference between, you know, what Al Franken was accused of and what Harvey
Weinstein is, right?"
Then he implied that the public should dial down on its outrage over the accusations.
"We gotta somehow figure out kind of our appetite for retribution."
If that wasn't bad enough, he went on to add:
"We're in this watershed moment, and it's great, but I think one thing that's not being
talked about is there are a whole s---load of guys — the preponderance of men I've
worked with — who don't do this kind of thing."
His "not all men"-themed approach to the issue was seen as both badly timed and tasteless,
and his words provoked a massive outpouring of frustration from colleagues, including
Minnie Driver who openly declared that he is simply unable to understand such abuse.
Hopefully, after all these hot takes gone wrong, Damon will learn to stop shooting from
the hip during interviews.
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