Matt Damon shared that he once took up a bartending job to prepare for a movie role. The actor recalled this experience during a promotional interview for his upcoming film, The Odyssey.
Matt Damon recalls how he prepared for his role in The Rainmaker
During an interview with GQ, Damon recalled that he took up a bartending job in Knoxville, Tennessee, to pick up an accent for his role in The Rainmaker. He did the job for about a month, calling the movie “my big break.” “It was in a Francis Ford Coppola movie, and I had a month to kill,” he added.
Sharing how he managed to bag the job, he said, “And then we were going to have three weeks of rehearsals at, you know, in Napa Valley where he lived. And so I went, I moved to Knoxville, and I just told the manager, this woman, I just told her what I was doing … so it was an extra bartender for her at no charge, right?”
He mentioned that he offered to give all of his tips to the other bartenders because he simply wanted to be there. Since his character in the film was also a bartender, serving drinks gave him the perfect opportunity to interact with locals and pick up the accent naturally.
In the 1997 movie, Damon portrayed Rudy Baylor, a newly graduated law student in Memphis struggling to pass the bar and find steady work. He eventually becomes a lawyer and takes on a corrupt insurance company.
Christopher Nolan directs Damon’s upcoming film, The Odyssey, based on Homer’s ancient Greek epic poem. Damon stars as Odysseus, alongside Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Charlize Theron, and Lupita Nyong’o.
The team filmed across multiple countries using new IMAX film technology, and the movie hits theaters on July 17, 2026.
