The talented Mr Damon

THEY are best friends, as close as brothers, and grew up together in Boston.

Throughout their teenage years the pair was forever sneaking off to New York for auditions.

They broke through together, writing and starring in their 1997 big-screen hit Good Will Hunting and earning an Oscar in the process, for Best Screenplay. But then, like brothers, their lives took their separate courses: one tackled a number of high-budget, misfiring movies, and at least one high-profile romantic tryst, emerging as something of a tabloid darling, while the other adopted a lower profile, cutting his teeth as a support player before emerging as the more bankable actor.

Such is the tale of Ben Affleck and Matt Damon.

“I think the press have given Ben a very unfair ride,” begins Damon, 40, when we meet in a New York hotel on a chilly winter’s morning. “And I’m so pleased that people liked his movie, The Town.” Affleck’s second film as director earned almost $150 million at the box office and scooped an Oscar nomination for actor Jeremy Renner.

“I was so proud and happy because he’s dealt with a lot of shit for a lot of years that was unjustified. And he was the butt of a lot of jokes, too, and so to watch all of those people who just have to eat their words, I’m pleased.”

Ordinarily, Damon is one of Hollywood’s more affable fellows, but today he’s venting steam.

“Now Ben’s done something twice that is really hard to do, which is come from nowhere, and make a career for yourself in the movie business, first as a writer and actor, and now as a director. Anyone in America, or anyone around the world is welcome to try it. It’s really hard to do, and he did it with Good Will Hunting and again with Gone Baby Gone and The Town.

“There aren’t many people who the industry views as being able to just pull an idea out of the air, write it, direct it and star in it. There haven’t been many people historically who can do that, and so that’s great that Ben is now in that place.” He laughs. “Now I’m just looking for a job from him.”

He’s joking, of course, yet also hinting at the truth — he and Affleck both profess a desire to work together again, and with Affleck now directing, the dream could become a reality. Damon is at the top of his game, building his career with the likes of The Rainmaker (1997), The Talented Mr Ripley (1999), All the Pretty Horses (2000), before becoming a major player with his starring turn in the Jason Bourne franchise, the first three of which took just shy of $1 billion worldwide.

Since then he’s gone on to muster fine performances in a wide variety of roles, for the likes of Robert De Niro (The Good Shepherd), Martin Scorsese (The Departed), Clint Eastwood (Invictus), and Ocean’s franchise buddy Steven Soderbergh (The Informant!). He also reunited with Paul Greengrass, the director of the last two Bourne films, for The Green Zone early last year. Now he too harbours a desire to step behind the camera.

“If I can just find a project,” he sighs. “I’m dying to do it. The first time out, I’d like something simple, a simple story. Spielberg [who cast Damon in Saving Private Ryan] always said that, just like he did Duel, which is very simple, but works, similar to what Ben did with Gone Baby Gone.”

In terms of keeping things simple, Damon can take guidance no doubt from his two most recent movies, which see him re-team with Eastwood for Hereafter and then work for the first time with the Coen brothers on True Grit, an adaptation of the 1968 Charles Portis novel, that scooped 10 Oscar nominations (two more even than the Coens earned with 2008’s Best Picture winner, No Country for Old Men).

The Coens’ latest endeavour recounts the story of a young girl, Mattie Ross (played by the excellent, Oscar-nominated newcomer Hailee Steinfeld), who sets out on an adventure to avenge her murdered father, recruiting a reckless, almost feckless, bottle-jockey of a lawman, Rooster Cogburn (Oscar-nominated veteran and recent winner Jeff Bridges), to track down her prey. There’s a famous John Wayne movie, released in 1969, although the filmmakers behind the new rendition don’t care too much for that.

“I didn’t even watch the John Wayne movie,” says Damon, echoing the sentiments of the Coens themselves. “It was definitely the novel, not the John Wayne movie, that inspired us.” Damon rides into town as the showy gunslinger and bounty hunter La Boeuf — he’s not all about the starring role — and the supporting characters in True Grit are a colourful bunch, each with their own foibles and flaws.

“Obviously when we meet Rooster, the audience is kind of led into thinking that this guy is the one with true grit, and then in the middle of the movie, you think maybe my character is the one, but it’s really her, it’s really the girl, Mattie, who turns out to have that, and I love that kind of little arc.”

His second movie with Eastwood, meanwhile, Hereafter, is in cinemas now. “It is beautiful,” he says. “[The Damned United writer] Peter Morgan wrote the script and we’re really excited. It’s great. The biggest problem with these movies is that they don’t last long enough. The same is true with The Adjustment Bureau.”

The latter is a romance based on the short story by sci-fi legend Philip K Dick and will open in March as Damon’s third movie of the year. “It’s directed by the guy that wrote the last Bourne movie, and Ocean’s Twelve [George Nolfi], and he is an old friend.”

Damon is not returning for the fourth instalment in the Bourne franchise, 2012’s Bourne Legacy, although he did recently shoot Contagion, an action-thriller with an all-star cast (Winslet, Paltrow, Law etc) for friend and filmmaker Soderbergh. “I work hard, and the down side is you work long hours when you do work, but the up side is when you don’t work you are a just totally unemployed schmuck and sit around the house all day.”

Not that home-life is an easy ride. Damon married Luciana Barroso in 2005, having met her working in a bar when he was shooting the Farrelly brothers movie Stuck on You in Florida. The couple has four girls — Barroso’s 12-year-old daughter, Alexia, and three of their own, Isabella, four, Gia, two and four-month-old Stella.

“Each new baby is different but what gets harder is the fact that you have the other kids now,” he smiles. “It is less that you are intimidated by having another baby and more that you want to make sure you are not giving any of the other kids short shrift because you feel like you’re on paternity leave. But I’m pretty happy now, I must say.” So too, no doubt is his old buddy Affleck. “He deserves all the praise he’s getting,” smiles Damon. “He really does.”

* True Grit is released on February 11