Matt Damon returns this weekend in The Bourne Ultimatum, his third film as the heroic amnesiac Jason Bourne.
The first two films were released in 2002 (The Bourne Identity) and 2004 (The Bourne Supremacy). Damon hasn’t entirely ruled out doing future Bourne films, but he sounds skeptical. He’s joked in interviews that the fourth could be called The Bourne Redundancy.
Damon also gets off a good line about the Oscars in an interview with EW.com: “The only way to judge a movie is 10 years down the line. I think they should do the Oscars that way. I wish this year we were voting on 1997.”
The Academy Award for best picture in 1997 went to Titanic, incidentally. The other nominees were As Good As it Gets, The Full Monty, LA Confidential… and Damon’s own Good Will Hunting. That was the year Titanic won 11 Oscars, including best director for James Cameron. Best actor and actress went to Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt, both for As Good As it Gets. Best supporting actor and actress went to Robin Williams (for Good Will Hunting) and Kim Basinger (for LA Confidential).
10 years since Good Will Hunting… that’s a long time, but it actually seems like Damon has been a star for longer than that.
Update: The Boston Globe has a quickie montage of Damon through the years, including a shot of him as Humpty Dumpty in a high school play.