Matt Damon: 'George Clooney Is a Loser'

By Jeanne Wolf, Parade.com

Fans of Matt Damon are getting a surprise. The hunky "Bourne" star is scarcely recognizable as a pudgy, bespectacled young executive in Steven Soderbergh's dark comedy "The Informant."

In the film, Damon plays real-life whistleblower Mark Whitacre, the man who helped the FBI expose a multi-national price-fixing conspiracy. Damon told Parade.com that he could hardly believe the story himself and then revealed a little-known fact about pal George Clooney.

Truth is stranger than fiction.
"Reading the book and the script, my jaw was on the floor. You can't make these things up. It was a whistleblower story unlike any I'd ever heard. This guy was doing these incredibly courageous things, wearing a wire and gathering all of this information about price fixing. At the same time he was embezzling money from the company he was exposing and the FBI had no idea."

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If only he could have gotten his act together.
"The funny part is that he was a brilliant executive on the rise. But he was battling his own kind of mental health issues. He couldn't help himself. Even predating this whole story, he was telling people that he was adopted by a family after his parents had died in an automobile accident and none of it was true."

The right time for laughs.
"Long before our current financial crisis, Steven made the decision to make it a dark comedy. I called him up and said, 'That's such a great idea to take that tone with this story that you wouldn't normally think of as humorous.' Now, you watch the news every night and see stories like this and the last thing you want to do is go see a movie that takes itself too seriously about the same stuff. But the story and the way Steven tells it is so absurd that you can't help but shake your head and laugh."

Looking the part.
"Since his face was rounder, I had little things stuck in my gums to push my cheeks out and I had a fake moustache. Then, I wore a toupee because he covered up the fact that he was bald with a hairpiece. Funny enough, nobody ever knew until he was booked by the FBI and they took his photo without it. I also gained about 30 pounds. I was eating a lot of burgers with Doritos for dessert. I hate to admit it, but I was in heaven."

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As for his wife.
"She was a good sport about it. I just told her that there was more of me to love. I was proud of my paunch. I paraded around the house quite a bit with my stomach hanging out. But, when it was over and it was time to get rid of it, that was tough. There's nothing like an In and Out Burger for me, so it was hard to say goodbye to those things."

A life-changing moment.
"I quit smoking with the help of a hypnotist. He didn't even hypnotize me; he just talked to me. He taught me that the reason why you finally quit is because you look at what cigarettes do to you. Once you realize the consequences, it's no longer an option for you to smoke. I think that applies to any addiction."

Why he always wants to remain George Clooney's bud.
"He has this beautiful place in Italy where he brings all of his friends and he's an amazingly generous person. As a friend of George, what you really need to do is try and stay on his list because he's got an incredible life that he shares with all his friends."

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What he can't change about him.
"George is a loser. We were in Vegas and he was like, 'I have never won anything in my life gambling.' I said, 'I know how to play. I'll show you.' He goes, 'I don't know when to hit or when to stay.' I said, 'Don't worry about it. I'll tell you.' Then, he lost 25 straight blackjack hands in a row, which I think is a record. I would never have believed it unless I saw it happen. Afterwards, he slipped a check under my hotel room door for $2,500 that said, 'For services rendered,' but it wasn't signed, so I couldn't cash it."

Why he likes to mix up his roles.
"You see actors dying of boredom doing the same thing over and over again. And it's probably true that it's in the studios best interest to do that. If that one thing is working, exploit it and keep it going. Then you see these actors trying to reach out and stretch and do something totally different and people just won't let them. I would hate if that happened to me."