According to actor Josh Hartnett, Oscar winner Matt Damon gives great advice. His timing, however, needs work. During an appearance on The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon, Hartnett revealed that the Bourne Identity actor gave him a warning before they starred together in Oppenheimer, but it was too late to do any good. Damon warned the then-44-year-old that he was too old to be putting on weight just for a film role.Unfortunately, it was too late. “He told me not to gain the weight I had already gained for the role,” Hartnett told a laughing Fallon.
Damon, who is now 53, has a steadfast rule of not gaining weight for a role now that he’s over 40. Although he tried to warn Hartnett not to pack on the pounds to play Ernest Lawrence in the Christopher Nolan film, the damage had already been done. When Hartnett informed him of his weight gain, Damon didn’t mince words:
I gained about 30 pounds for the role, and he was like, ‘You’re never gonna get that off again, man.’
Oppenheimer
5/5
- Release Date
- July 21, 2023
- Cast
- Cillian Murphy , Matt Damon , Robert Downey Jr. , Emily Blunt , Florence Pugh , Gary Oldman , Josh Hartnett , Jack Quaid , Kenneth Branagh , Rami Malek , Alex Wolff , Matthew Modine
- Runtime
- 180 Minutes
Damon played Lt. Gen Leslie Groves, who worked with Oppenheimer to oversee the Manhattan Project that built the atomic bomb. Hartnett, meanwhile, played Ernest Lawrence, a brilliant physicist who won a Nobel Prize in 1939 and was a colleague of Oppenheimer at UC Berkeley. Hartnett put on the weight to better resemble Lawrence’s larger frame, a move Damon said he would regret. Hartnett continued, saying that Damon was relentless and teased him for his ill-thought-out weight gain.
“He’s like, ‘You’re gonna spend the rest of your life trying to get that weight off, and it’s never gonna come off because your body’s gonna want to get that weight back on. You’re just gonna keep growing back out to that size, and you’re going to try and get it off, but it’s just gonna go back.’ I was like, ‘Thanks, Matt. Thanks for telling me this now. I’ve already gained it.’”
Thankfully, his efforts to embody the character were certainly not in vain as his performance in the film opposite Cillian Murphy’s Robert Oppenheimer is excellent, and the film itself became a critical, cultural, and box office phenomenon. Oppenheimer won seven Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director for Nolan, and Best Supporting Actor for Robert Downey Jr.
From Christopher Nolan to M. Night Shyamalan, Josh Harnett Is Back in the Spotlight
After working with Christopher Nolan, Hartnett is now back in the spotlight and will next lead the M. Night Shyamalan film Trap. The thriller finds the actor playing a serial killer trying to evade capture inside a crowded pop concert. It’s a departure from Hartnett’s usual roles, and early reviews about the film call it an entertaining ride and a return to the early Shyamalan films like The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable. The film also stars Ariel Donoghue, and Saleka Shyamalan, and it opens in theaters on August 2.
Related
Josh Hartnett’s 10 Best Performances, Ranked
Josh Hartnett has had a unique, surprising, and interesting career. Here are his 10 best performances, ranked.
Josh Hartnett rose to fame in 1998 with roles in Halloween H20: 20 Years Later and The Faculty. He became a star with a lead role in Michael Bay’s World War II epic Pearl Harbor in 2001. His other notable film roles include Black Hawk Down, Sin City, Lucky Number Slevin, and 30 Days of Night. He also starred in the TV series Penny Dreadful, Black Mirror, and The Bear.
Oppenheimer
is now streaming on Prime Video.
Trap
, meanwhile, is scheduled to be released in the United States on August 2, 2024, and you can check out the trailer below.
