 | |  |  | Matt Damon News & Gossip
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| | Matt Damon visits Zimbabwean refugees in South African border camp | | Added 15 years ago | Source: CeleBitchy |
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Matt Damon is in South Africa filming The Human Factor, the story of Nelson Mandela?s rise to power. Mandela is being played by Morgan Freeman, and the film is being directed by Clint Eastwood, both of whom need an on-set doctor. According to Buzz Sugar, ?Matt Damon will play star rugby player Francois Pienaar who befriended Nelson Mandela.?
While in South Africa, Matt Damon traveled to the border town of Musina, which is now home to thousands of Zimbabwean refugees. Damon was traveling through his association with Not On Our Watch, the human rights group that funnels money to refugees of genocidal warfare and extreme economic instability in places like Sudan, Chad and Zimbabwe. Damon met with many refugees, including several women who were victims of rape and sexual assault. The Associated Press has more:
MUSINA, South Africa (AP) ? Matt Damon listened emotionally as a Zimbabwean woman described how she was raped while pregnant during a perilous journey to cross into South Africa from her troubled homeland.
The Hollywood actor was visiting refugee centers in this border town Tuesday as part of his work with Not On Our Watch, a human rights group he started with other celebrities such as Brad Pitt and George Clooney to draw attention to the world’s suffering peoples.
“I have spoken to so many people who went through so much to get to this point. It is testament to the situation across the border in Zimbabwe,” Damon told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview.
An estimated 3 million Zimbabweans have fled economic collapse and dire humanitarian conditions at home, and Damon said he was “shocked and saddened” by the plight of those he spoke to. He was especially moved by the tale of the 18-year-old woman who was raped.
She said she and a friend bribed a police officer to allow them to cross the border illegally last year and then met a taxi driver who promised her a job. On her first night, the taxi driver took the woman, who was five months pregnant at the time, to a house to stay. A friend of the driver raped her there. “I screamed, no one heard me,” the young woman said, crying as a watery-eyed Damon swallowed hard.
Aid agencies have expressed concern about an increase in sexual violence against women crossing over from Zimbabwe as well as a rise in the number of unaccompanied children making the journey. Many must cross the crocodile-infested Limpopo River and enter South Africa through holes in the fence along the poorly patrolled border, often paying exorbitant fees to unscrupulous guides.
In one camp visited by Damon, about 5,000 Zimbabweans are camped on a sandy patch strewn with rubbish and personal belongings. Some have built makeshift structures out of plastic, and others sleep on pieces of cardboard. There are about a dozen toilets and only a few taps.
Damon, who patiently listened to heart-wrenching stories in the scorching heat, called the situation in Musina “untenable” and said “action has to be taken” by international and regional leaders. Damon is in South Africa making a film directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Morgan Freeman as the country’s first black president, Nelson Mandela. He said he hoped to use his “celebrity capital” to raise awareness about Zimbabwe, where a new unity government is calling for $2 billion in aid to help rebuild.
[From The Associated Press hosted by Google]
It sounds like the meetings really affected Matt. So many of these refugee ?camps? are little more than a series of tents, and funding for any kind of intensive operation to care for Zimbabwean refugees will most likely be a tough road. Damon is doing God?s work, as far I?m concerned, but I?m sure there will be those who find something to criticize.
On a more positive note, I had no idea that Matt Damon had a role in The Human Factor. I bet he?s really pleased that he gets to work with Clint Eastwood and Morgan Freeman, and I hope he enjoys himself while he?s there.
Here?s Matt Damon coming out of his downtown apartment and walking to his car in Manhattat on February 12th. Images thanks to Pacific Coast News.
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| | Matt Damon photographed shirtless and with his adorable baby daughter | | Added 15 years ago | Source: CeleBitchy |
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These photos are a double treat in that we get to see Matt Damon without his shirt on along with what I believe is the first glimpse of his six month-old daughter, Gia Zavala. Damon, his wife Luciana and their daughters Gia, Isabella, two and a half, and Alexia (from Luciana’s first marriage) were spotted on vacation in the Caribbean on Monday. Damon was seen drinking a beer and watching his daughters play on the beach.
Damon, 38, gained from 20-30 pounds last summer for his role as a conflicted executive in the true-life drama The Informant. In order to gain weight quickly for the role, Damon said that he stopped working out, drank a lot of beer and ate burgers. He admitted that it was easier to gain weight in his late 30s than when he was in was in his 20s.
Damon had to lose weight quickly after that role as he needed to re-shoot scenes for his film The Green Zone in September. He seems to have gained some of the weight back, but he’s still super hot looking and looks great. It looks like he had a relaxing vacation with his family over Valentine’s Day weekend.
Thanks to MavrixOnline for these photos.
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| | Celebrity Quote Of The Day: Matt Damon | | Added 15 years ago | Source: Feed Me Gossip |
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“They could never make a James Bond movie like any of the Bourne films because Bond is an imperialist, misogynist sociopath who goes around bedding women and swilling martinis and killing people. He’s repulsive.” - Matt Damon
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| | Matt Damon says James Bond is an 'imperialist, misogynist sociopath' | | Added 15 years ago | Source: CeleBitchy |
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Last September, Matt Damon caused some controversy with statements in an AP interview in which he called Vice Presidential Republican candidate Sarah Palin “absurd? like a bad Disney movie.” Many people thought that Damon was being disrespectful at the time, although after Palin’s interviews with Katie Couric and Brian Williams came out there were more that agreed with him.
Damon, 38, gave an interview to his local newspaper the Miami Herald in which he typically strongly asserted his opinion on several topics. Damon is the star of the successful Bourne franchise, and had some choice words for his competition, James Bond:
”They could never make a James Bond movie like any of the Bourne films,” Damon says scornfully. “Because Bond is an imperialist, misogynist sociopath who goes around bedding women and swilling martinis and killing people. He’s repulsive.
“Steve [Soderbergh, who produced yet another of Damon's spy movies, Syriana] told me that years ago he was offered a Bond movie. He told them he’d do it if they gave him creative control. Absolutely not, they said. They have a formula, they stick to it, and it makes them a lot of money. They know what they’re doing, and they’re going to keep doing it.”
[From The Miami Herald via The Huffington Post]
I never really thought of the differences between Bond and Bourne because they’re both high-energy entertaining action movies to me. Bourne does have more of a connection to the deaths, though, and I remember Clive Owen’s character’s death in the first film as feeling particularly human and a little sad. There’s usually some emotion and meaning attached to deaths in the Bourne films and they’re not as slick or glossed over as the Bond series. In that respect you can see how Bond could be considered a sociopath. Bond is an old franchise and in a way is still stuck in old ways of thinking despite their successful efforts to revive it. Bourne doesn’t seem to kill without reason and he had a steady girlfriend for the first two films. To many movie-goers, these films are violent action movies and you don’t really consider the morality of the protagonists, you just root for Bond and Bourne while they do what they have to do.
In that same interview, Damon also called conservative NY Times columnist William Kristol an “idiot” and seemed to say that torture was warranted when civilian lives are at stake:
Instead, the small talk — if that’s the right phrase — ranged from which New York Times columnist is the worst (conservative William Kristol, according to Damon: ”He’s an idiot — he wrote that we should be grateful to George Bush because he won the Iraq war. We! Won! The! War!”) to the proper place of torture in American foreign policy.
”Look, the best line about torture I’ve heard came from [retired CIA officer turned war-on-terrorism critic] Milt Beardon,” Damon says. “He said, `If a guy knows where a dirty bomb is hidden that’s going to go off in a Marriott, put me in a room with him and I’ll find out. But don’t codify that. Just let me break the law.’
“Which I think is right. You can’t legalize torture. But anybody would do it in that situation. You’d do it to me in that situation; you’d pull out my fingernails if you thought I knew something like that.”
[From The Miami Herald]
Damon might want to temper his arguments if he doesn’t want to alienate people, but he doesn’t seem to particularly care. If this is how the guy is talking at 38, he’s sure going to be a cantankerous old dude.
Damon also told a story about how he tried to score tickets to the inauguration after campaigning for Barack Obama and was informed that bleacher seats would run him $25,000 a piece. This is similar to something Scarlett Johansson said on The Tonight Show about how she would probably have to donate $50k if she wanted to attend the inauguration.
Matt Damon is shown at the Clinton Global Initiative on 9/26/08. Credit: PRPhotos
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| | Matt Damon and George Clooney's Nobu Night | | Added 15 years ago | Source: Celebrity Gossip |
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They’ve become an American cinematic mainstay thanks to the “Ocean’s Eleven” franchise, and last night George Clooney and Matt Damon were spotted hanging out in London, England.
The “Michael Clayton” actor and his “Bourne Ultimatum” pal were both seen exiting the exclusive Nobu Berkeley restaurant after enjoying some male bonding.
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