The Academy Award-winner is back, starring in the new drama about an Oklahoma oil rig worker whose daughter is imprisoned in France.
The red carpets were out of storage and back on sidewalks in the French Riviera city of Cannes this month, after remaining rolled up last year due to COVID The delay did not dampen the glitz, and only added to the anticipation of this month’s Cannes Film Festival where, at the premiere for the movie “Stillwater,” Matt Damon and his team received a five-minute standing ovation. “You got choked up,” said correspondent Seth Doane. “Man, I just was overwhelmed,” Damon said. “We’ve been sitting on this movie for so long. And the idea that I was back into a theater with, like, a thousand people?” “Were you surprised that it touched you so much?” “I don’t know, I’m getting old, man! I think I get choked up easier now ever since I had kids. It’s like, my job has become a lot easier because I don’t have to try. I don’t have to reach for any emotions – whether it’s joy or whether it’s pain – because it’s all just nearby, because the stakes are so much higher when you have kids.” He’s famous as a leading man and action hero, but we learned the role this actor prioritizes most now is dad to four girls – and in the film “Stillwater,” set to be released in the U.S. later this month, he plays a father who travels to France to free his daughter (portrayed by Abigail Breslin) from prison. The mission is all the more complex because Damon’s character, Bill Baker, an oil rig worker from Oklahoma, does not speak a word of French. The movie had all the elements you’d probably expect Damon would consider, including one that has nothing to do with any studio: “We kind of had a family meeting about it, and my kids let me do the movie,” he said. “I really wanted to do it. I’ve been dying to work with Tom McCarthy, the director, and I just thought it was such a beautiful story and such a great role. So, I went for it.” To watch a trailer for “Stillwater” click on the video player below. “Tell me about that family meeting; you sit down with your wife and your girls and you say, ‘What do you think?'” Doane asked. “Yeah, I mean, I like that they know that I love my job. They know it’s time-consuming and that it’s a lot of work, and that it fills me up, you know? And actually, this movie is the first time – we have a two-week rule in our family, that we’re not apart for more than two weeks – and this was the first movie where we violated it.
