Matt Damon reveals how Clint Eastwood shut him down while directing: 'You wanna waste everybody's...

&34;The Rip&34; star was excited to work with Eastwood on 2009's &34;Invictus,&34; but it didn't go the way he thought it would. Matt Damon reveals how Clint Eastwood shut him down while directing: 'You wanna waste everybody's time?' &34;The Rip&34; star was excited to work with Eastwood on 2009's &34;Invictus,&34; but it didn't go the way he thought it would. By Raechal Shewfelt :maxbytes(150000):stripicc()/RaechalShewfeltauthorphotoc49d3a3b6aa442f588f2bbc0de804e09.jpg) Raechal Shewfelt Raechal Shewfelt is a writer at . She has been working at EW since 2024.

"The Rip" star was excited to work with Eastwood on 2009's "Invictus," but it didn't go the way he thought it would.

Matt Damon reveals how Clint Eastwood shut him down while directing: 'You wanna waste everybody's time?'

"The Rip" star was excited to work with Eastwood on 2009's "Invictus," but it didn't go the way he thought it would.

By Raechal Shewfelt

Raechal Shewfelt

Raechal Shewfelt is a writer at **. She has been working at EW since 2024. Her work has previously appeared on Yahoo and in American *Journalism Review* and *The Shreveport Times*.

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January 26, 2026 9:00 a.m. ET

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Clint Eastwood and Matt Damon on the 'Invictus' set in 2009. Credit:

Warner Bros/Courtesy Everett Collection

Matt Damon won't soon forget working with Clint Eastwood.

Damon had prepared extensively for his role in the 2009 movie *Invictus*, which was based on the true story of Nelson Mandela (played by Morgan Freeman) teaming up with Damon's character, rugby player Francois Pienaar, to unite a South Africa over their love of the sport following the end of apartheid. The film was his chance to work with someone he thought of as a hero.

But Damon's time with the Oscar-winning director didn't go exactly as he had expected.

"I was playing a South African rugby player. And that's a really tough accent to do," Damon recalled on a recent episode of *Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend*. "So I spent six months — there's this great dialogue coach named Tim Monich, and he's very famous in our world, and he's wonderful. I've known him for a very long time. And Tim would come — I was living in Miami at the time. I had a little office over the garage and, from nine to five, Monday through Friday, we would work on this accent. Because South Africans speak English, [but] it's like their tongue does the exact opposite thing that ours does."

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Damon was ready to act with a capital A.

"The very first take, I did it. Meanwhile, I've done this so many thousands of times. I have a number of different ways I'm thinking of doing the scene," Damon recalled. "He goes, 'Cut. Print. Move on.' And I go, 'Hang on. Hang on. Boss, you want to do another one?' And he goes, 'Why? You wanna waste everybody's time?'"**

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Damon simply forged ahead: "And I went, 'No, I guess we're moving on.' And it was one take." The actor realized that Eastwood's approach was to tax the crew only when needed.

There was "a kindness" to the words from the "really lovely guy," Damon said.**

Matt Damon attends Netflix's 'The Rip' premiere Jan. 13 in New York.

Arturo Holmes/WireImage

He also noted that things were different when they worked together again, on the 2010 drama *Hereafter*.

"What was really interesting was the second movie I did with him, it builds to a head, a scene with me and this 9-year-old kid," Damon explained. "And the 9-year-old kid was a non-actor. We had done one take for everybody all through *Invictus*, Morgan Freeman, everybody gets one take. We must have done 40 takes with this little boy."**

Damon's current movie, *The Rip*, is available on Netflix.

Watch his full conversation with O'Brien above.

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Source: Sports

Published: January 26, 2026 at 04:38PM on Source: RED MAG

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