Matt Damon Promised to Take a Break From Acting Until Christopher Nolan Called

It turns out Oppenheimer was the reason Matt Damon failed to take a break from acting.

During an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Damon revealed he had promised his wife he would take a step back, under one condition. “I actually negotiated in couples therapy ­— this is a true story — the one caveat to my taking time off was if Chris Nolan called,” he said.

“This is going to sound made up, but it’s actually true,” he explained. “I had — not to get too personal — negotiated extensively with my wife that I was taking time off.”

Damon recalled that director Christopher Nolan had effectively put him on the back burner after appearing in Interstellar in 2014. “[He] put me on ice for a couple of movies,” he said. “So, I wasn’t in the rotation.”

Feeling as though he could safely take some time off, Damon agreed to take a break from acting unless Christopher Nolan called. “This is without knowing whether or not he was working on anything because he never tells you. He just calls you out of the blue. And so, it was a moment in my household.” Of course, Nolan did come calling.

Damon stars as Major General Leslie Groves in Nolan’s upcoming biopic, Oppenheimer. Overseeing the Manhattan Project, Groves worked closely with J. Robert Oppenheimer to research and develop the world’s first nuclear weapons. He also plays a major part in the upcoming film.

The all-star ensemble cast is packed full of big names, including Emily Blunt, Robert Downey Jr, Florence Pugh, Rami Malek, and many more. David Dastmalchian also joined the cast as William L. Borden, with Drake and Josh star Josh Peck joining as the real-life scientist, Kenneth Bainbridge.

It’s certainly no surprise that Damon would want to be involved with Nolan’s next big film. The director himself revealed he went to great lengths on Oppenheimer to record the Trinity Nuclear Test – the world’s first atomic detonation – without using CGI.

“It’s one of the most challenging projects I’ve ever taken on in terms of the scale of it, and in terms of encountering the breadth of Oppenheimer’s story,” said Nolan.

Want to read more about Oppenheimer? Find out how Cillian Murphy’s failed Batman audition led to a long partnership with Christopher Nolan and why Nolan says the film is ‘kind of a horror movie’.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.