In one session, he negotiated a time-out with the very exception that actually came about.
“Oppenheimer” starts in German cinemas on Thursday, July 20th. In the historical film about the inventor of the atomic bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Matt Damon plays Major General Leslie Groves alongside the protagonist Cillian Murphy. But it could have gone very differently because Damon actually wanted to stop acting for a while. He had previously made this promise to his wife in couples therapy. There was only one exception to this promise: if he received a call from the film’s director, Christopher Nolan, he would interrupt the time-out. And this is exactly what finally happened.
“It might sound made up, but it’s actually true,” Damon revealed in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. “In order not to get too personal, I had to negotiate extensively with my wife about allowing myself a break. I was on ‘Interstellar’ and then Chris put me on hold for a couple of films so I wasn’t on the rotation but I actually negotiated in couples therapy – that’s a true story – the only caveat being me some time off would be if Chris Nolan called.”
He continued: “This was done without knowing if he was working on anything or not because he never tells you. He just calls you out of the blue.” And that’s exactly what happened. How his wife Luciana Barroso, with whom he has been married since 2005 and has a 17-year-old daughter, reacted to the positive phone call with Nolan, Damon did not say in the conversation.