Real Life Matt Damon Nothing Like Character He Plays in Emotional New Movie School Ties

School Ties, playing at the Loews Harvard Square Theater

In School Ties, Matt Damon '92-'93 plays Charlie Dillon, a rich young bigot at a New England prep school. In real life, though, Matt Damon is more like your next-door neighbor. In fact, he just might be: Damon is a senior at Harvard.

Damon grew up in Central Square in Cambridge. The acting bug bit him at age eleven when he began studying theater at the Wheelock Family Theatre. His first job was in a commercial spot at 16. He took the money he earned and went to New York to hire an agent.

In his senior year of high school at Cambridge Rindge and Latin, he got one line in Mystic Pizza. He did theater during his first year here at Harvard. Sophomore year he landed a role in Rising Son, a cable TV movie starring Brian Dennehy and Piper Laurie. Now, this fall, with the release of School Ties, a film about bigotry in an upper class boarding school, one wonders if Damon has been seduced by the trappings of success.

The answer is no. Damon doesn't want to be "another flash in the pan." He believes that "it's an unhealthy thing to be told you're going to be a big star." He just wants people to "respect me for what I am and I respect them for what I am and I respect them for what they are." To Damon, acting's just something he does well.

Unlike the actor who plays him, Charlie Dillon is a legacy who feels that he has to live up to his family's expectations that he will be a great quarterback and an honors student. How did Damon prepare for this demanding role? Damon remarked that his Harvard experiences have prepared him for it. Matt said he "know[s] people like [Dillon] who have wealth and power and are fifth generation" here at Harvard, though they are not bigots. He just "tapped into [these] friends" who had felt the pressures of prep school and the sting of bigotry.

Matt Damon is not Charlie Dillon, a fact he felt compelled to convey to the cast and crew of School Ties. "Growing up where I grew up, the last thing you want to be is a racist." Difficult as saying the hateful lines in the movie was for Damon, the experience taught him that that kind of hatred will never be for him.

He couldn't do the job half-assed because it would ruin the power of the film. According to Damon, "the work comes first." Unfortunately, he says, "I was working in a negative atmosphere," generated by the attitudes the actors needed to take to produce the onscreen energy.

Damon worked on School Ties a year ago and did theater when he returned to Cambridge, including parts in the productions of A My name is Alice and The Speed of Darkness. He says that he wanted to talk to other people about the emotional weight he carried after saying and doing the terrible things in the film, but there was never any time. However, Matt said the role has had no negative effects on how friends view him--"they know that's not me." When people encounter him on the street to commend him on his job in the film, he always says, "I was a real jerk, huh?" in order to communicate to people that he is not at all like his screen personality.

Damon believes "films should be artistic endeavors that effect change." He views every role as a learning experience and likes the detective work involved in researching a role. In School Ties, the cast had to learn '50s football, '50s dances, music and pop culture. Playing football with '50s dances, music and pop culture. Playing football with '50s cars all around him made it feel like he was part of the era. "When there's that kind of marriage of atmosphere and research, it transports you."

For Damon, his dedication to acting overcame any kind of stage fright or hesitations he had. He had to remind himself of this fact in the movie's shower scene. The scene was filmed on set, so there were tanks filled with hot water that some times ran out. At his feet were the crew, blowing dry ice at his knees to create the fog effect. Damon concentrated on the acting, remembering that he had to get the power of the scene across.

"Everything was working against me that day," he remembered. "Obviously, everyone was embarrassed. I had to be in a shower. I had to be Charlie Dillon, not conscious of anything but David (Brendan Fraser)," his enemy in the movie.

"From an acting perspective, it's a simple task. You know your objectives and obstacles. There were harder scenes. Technically, [the shower] was the hardest. And yes, I was embarrassed. Everyone was naked."

Among his inspirations, Damon cites Marlon Brando, who he calls "a genius. There's no other way to put it. He's the best actor I've ever seen." Other greats are Meryl Streep. Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro and Alec Baldwin. He would "love to work with any of these actors."

Damon, who is an undergraduate English concentrator, sees himself acting in the future He's always known that he wants to be an actor. He says someday he'll be a director, but that's 30 years from now. His goal at the moment is to act--it puts the intensity in his life.