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Were you aware of how Robert De Niro was shooting you in The Good Shepherd?
?Yeah, and it's also that Bob Richardson is one of the best DPs. He's really incredible. They had conversations about the look of the film and what they wanted to get, and I'm sure shot me differently depending on the year because we didn't do a lot with makeup. We did a very little bit but little things, shaved my hairline back a little bit and then added to it for the 1939 stuff, but really subtle.

You'd have to kind of look for it. [There was] a little bit of aging around the eyes where you can see, mostly in the one shot where I have the magnifying glass, there are some wrinkles that are makeup and that look really good. But he doesn't want to do anything more than that because he didn't want anything to distract.

He felt like it was an internal thing. And also because the character is only 41 or 42 years old, I'm 36 so I have much further to go to get to Yale than the other way. But then there were the things with the glasses, those glasses had a real prescription, so I'd wear a negative prescription contact lens and then put the glasses over because Bob, again, it's all details with Bob. If it was an over-the-shoulder shot and you were catching just a piece of the glasses to see that there was [a prescription]. That stuff, it's like the incremental effect, it's like the aggregate effect of all those things added up makes you go, 'Okay, I believe what I'm watching.'

I've heard these stories of him from prop people.

On The Departed actually, the prop guys said that the last time they worked with De Niro, he came in to look at?it was like a little prop. I forget what it was. It was just a little trinket, like a cigarette case or something like that. He had come in on his day off, 'Do you have that cigarette case?' He just wanted to hold it and touch it and see if he liked it. Then he'd go, 'Yeah, okay, that's good.' And everything was like that.

Every detail was a performance. The hat, if I wore a hat, he would come and he would touch the hat. He had a very particular thing about hats and how to wear a hat. If he would see an extra, he would just go, 'That's wrong,' and he'd go and he'd fix their hat. It's just every little thing like that was of absolute importance to him. Nothing got spared, which may be to his detriment at times.?

Damon continued, ?Soderbergh said to me that a big part of directing - this is what I am, a collection of things people have said to me - but what he said was, 'A great thing to know about directing is every scene does not have the same importance. And when you shoot it, you can't place the same weight on it or else you'll end up doing 110 18 hour days,' which is what we ended up doing on Good Shepherd. But Soderbergh just says, 'No, you?ve got to know this scene is just getting you into that scene.' He cuts in camera. It's a very different thing. Whereas working with Bob it's just every single detail was poured over.

The amount of work that went into this movie is just really incredible. And every department, too. It was one of those movies that they were saying to me halfway through, 'This is already a legendary movie in the New York circle.' These prop guys who were the sons of the sons of the sons of people who have been in the prop business are talking, 'Oh, you were on the Shepherd.' This is a movie that we would start at five in the morning Monday and we would finish at five in the morning Saturday. That was our five day week. Just keep getting pushed and pushed and pushed. It was really grueling, but all of those things, the angles that he shot me was, I'm sure, the subject of great discussion between he and Richardson. There was no stone left unturned.

I think the other thing was to leave after a 12 hour day to him would have felt like he wasn't taking advantage. If he had money to shoot, it was for a certain amount of time, and he was going to use every second. They were going to have to come and take the camera away. There were times when I had to write a check back so that while we were in the Dominican Republic, because they were trying to take the cameras, and we had more shooting to do. It was just one of those movies. He gave all of his money away. He's in the movie and doesn't take a paycheck so that it goes back into the [budget]. So that way he saves the money from casting the role. Also he plays the role and they get the [star power] so it drives up the cache of the movie, and then the money goes back into the budget. Everything was going back. It was all about the final movie getting done the way he wanted it to get done.?

Is there one piece of advice De Niro gave you as an actor?
?Good question. I don't know that there was one. Kind of what I was talking about at the beginning about that kind of permission not to indicate was a very big deal, just because it's so much easier to indicate and we're so used to it. I mean, like the performances you see normally I think as film audiences, we're used to seeing people overact. It's like [sniffling loudly, choking back tears]. Who does that? You go back to the '70s and you look at some of those movies, and maybe it's just the directors had so much power then. A movie like Dog Day Afternoon, I always use that as an example. Today, imagine a studio film getting made where they said, 'Okay, you rob a bank because your boyfriend needs money for a sex change operation.' They wouldn't make that movie, really, but it's one of the great films ever made. There's things that the actors do in those movies, they're just so subtle and their performances are so incredible.

I think I took that away, definitely. You have to really be feeling things and thinking things, but I'm going to try to resist my urge to indicate in the future.?

Page 3:Playing an Unsympathetic Character, the Status of The Bourne Ultimatum, and the Captain Kirk Rumors