Matt Damon: ‘Bourne’ to be in action

LOS ANGELES - It’s not easy being an action hero. Especially an action hero who is concerned with making everything look as real as possible.

Just ask Matt Damon.

“Access Hollywood’s” Billy Bush sat down with Damon and found out this star was “Bourne” to be in action.

“The Brits have Daniel Craig and we have… Matt Damon,” Bush told Damon.

“That’s right,” Damon smiled.

James Bond aside, there is nothing comparable to the raw, brutal brawls in Damon’s new film, “The Bourne Ultimatum.”

“The action sequences are aggressive. How much are you doing? Are you taking some nicks?” Bush asked.

“A little bit, but they keep it very safe for us, so we get to do a lot of it because they’re really good at rigging things the actors can do, but it’s never dangerous really,” Damon revealed.

A few bumps and bruises are fine, but director Paul Greengrass drew the line at broken bones.

“They’ve trained and rehearsed the moves because basically it’s a very, very violent dance,” Greengrass added.

For Damon, being in the middle of the action was important for the credibility of the film.

“I wanted to do as much as possible so I was believable, because audiences are so smart right now. They know when you cut to a really wide shot and see this guy jumping three stories, it’s like, ‘Well that’s probably not him,’” he laughed.

And while Damon may not have been leaping from tall buildings, he was busy jumping from speeding cars and moving trains. Also lending to the movie’s authenticity are the worldwide locations the cast and crew traveled to in order to film the latest “Bourne” installment.

“You’re going all over the world. You’re hitting Torino, Italy, you’re in Spain,” Bush noted.

Add to that stops in Tangier, Moscow, Paris, London and New York — all in three months — and you have a bit of an idea what it took to shoot the film.

“I have a passport that’s just so thick, I keep having to add pages to it,” Damon laughed. “I just looked at my daughter’s passport and before she was 1; she had 11 stamps.”

Catch Damon and his spanning-the-globe stunts when “The Bourne Ultimatum” hits theaters Aug. 3.

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