LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Matt Damon has been one of Barack Obama’s harshest critics in Hollywood, but he told TheWrap that despite his rough words for the president, he is pleased he was re-elected.

“I voted for him,” Damon said. “Absolutely, I voted for him.”

Damon, who was in New York City this week to promote his environmental drama “Promised Land,” made headlines last year when he criticized the president in interviews with Elle magazine and Piers Morgan. At the time, he faulted Obama for not pushing for more Wall Street reforms in the wake of the financial crisis.

“You know, a one-term president with some balls who actually got stuff done would have been, in the long run of the country, much better,” Damon told an Elle interviewer in December 2011.

The actor acknowledged to TheWrap that after his frank talk, he had played a less active role in Obama’s re-election campaign. “They didn’t ask me to do any fundraisers this time,” he said, laughing.

And, he said, he has higher hopes for the coming four years, now that the president is not worried about securing re-election.

“I’m a perennial optimist,” Damon told TheWrap. “So I’m very hopeful that this second term is going be a great one and that we’re going to see who he is and he’s going to make a lot of people’s lives a lot better. That’s my true hope.”

Damon’s latest film casts a critical eye over “fracking,” a controversial drilling process used to extract natural gas that some environmentalists fear could contaminate ground water and impact air quality. The actor not only appears in the film; he co-wrote the Oscar hopeful with co-star John Krasinski. “Promised Land” opens in limited release on December 28.

Krasinski told TheWrap that he and Damon made “Promised Land” to examine the failures of the democratic process. When it came to politics, he was more critical of Washington gridlock than any one politician.

“We have a group of people in the House and the Senate who are actually willing to throw away any progress for one side or the other just to win a point for an imaginary team that none of us really belongs to,” Krasinski said. “So that’s the upsetting thing.”

One politician who both men support is Elizabeth Warren. The newly elected Democratic senator from Massachusetts has been a fierce critic of the elaborate financial concoctions that helped lead to the recession. Krasinski, Damon and Ben Affleck hosted a fundraiser for Warren at J.J. Abrams Bad Robot production studios earlier this year.

Damon said he has no regrets about voicing his political views and doubts that it prevents audiences from judging his work on its own merits.

“I don’t worry about it,” Damon told TheWrap. “I mean people know I’m a liberal guy, and I’m fine with that. I think people go to the movies that they want to go to. A Jason Bourne movie is always going to have a bigger audience than a smaller movie and there are people of every stripe who go to those.”

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I freakin love the idea that Matt Damon has become such good friends with John Krasinski (in my imaginary world, they are a celebrity couple thus the debate above). Both are so awesome, hilarious, and oh so talented. I just see Matt raving about John everywhere these days and its the cutest thing ever. It peaked with John Krasinski saying on David Letterman (while introducing a clip of Promised Land and their potential conflict over a woman in the movie), “This is a clip of something NOT out of the ordinary  me stealing a woman away from Matt Damon”

(or something to that effect…it was just amazing).

#AwesomePeopleCollision

#GoWatchThePromisedLand

The “Bourne” star is in talks to join the cast of “Monuments Men,” a WWII drama based on Robert M. Edsel’s book of the same name that was adapted by Clooney as a starring and directing vehicle, according to Deadline. The plot centers on the efforts of a group of Allied art historians and museum personnel who are tasked with salvaging works of art and other items of cultural importance from the Nazis in Europe during the latter days of WWII.

Damon, who previously starred with Clooney in the “Ocean’s” trilogy as well as the Iraq War drama “Syriana,” is just the latest big name to board the project, which already boasts the likes of Daniel Craig, Bill Murray, Cate Blanchett, Jean Dujardin (“The Artist”) and John Goodman.

“Monuments Men” is scheduled to begin shooting in Europe this January.

Damon will next be seen in “Promised Land,” the upcoming Gus Van Sant drama that was co-written by Damon and co-star John Krasinski. That film is slated for an Oscar-qualifying run beginning December 28, before moving into wider release after the first of the year.

Read more at http://www.hitfix.com/news/matt-damon-in-talks-to-join-george-clooney-and-bill-murray-in-monuments-men#iM2VJ10bkIjRU2HD.99

Matt Damon hopes his daughters never follow him into acting because Hollywood is so unfair to women.

The 41-year-old actor – who raises Alexia, 14, Isabella, six, Gia, four and 23-month-old Stella with wife Luciana -is horrified by how Hollywood treats women over and would never want that for his own kids.

Speaking in a Hollywood Reporter roundtable discussion with actors including Richard Gere, Denzel Washington, Jamie Foxx, he said: ‘I would try to steer my daughters away from acting. Women are in a different business than we are. It is just brutal for women. For men, the roles get really good at 40 and beyond. And that’s when you really start doing your best work.’

Matt also thinks fame has changed how other people treat him.

He explained: ‘When we started writing ‘Good Will Hunting’, I was 22 and Ben was 20 and it came out when I was 27 and he was 25. I always had this theory that your kind of a retard emotionally the moment you become famous. It’s not that you change, the world changes this relationship to you. So your entire reality shifts and that’s a jarring experience and hard to prepare for.’

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Matt Damon, 41, is sporting gray hair, and blames his daughters.

Damon has four children with his wife Luciana, all girls: Alexia, 14, Isabella, 6, Gia, 4, and 23-month-old Stella.

People noted how Damon appeared with his gray hair while supporting Ben Affleck at the Argo movie dinner at Porter House steakhouse in New York. The Bourne trilogy actor told People Stylewatch, “I point out all of the gray and I say to my daughters, ‘You did this and you did this and you did this.’”

Of course he was joking, and his daughters understand it because according to him, “They really think it’s funny.”

Yahoo reported Damon is proud of his gray hair, but movie executives prefer to hide it.

Damon explained, ”They dyed the grey out for We Bought a Zoo, but I was like, ‘I like my grey hair.’ I’m proud of it.”

However, recently Damon shaved his head bald for a movie role and wears a beanie to endure the cold New York weather.

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Matt Damon has shot down suggestions he will be returning to the Bourne film franchise, insisting writers would have to come up with an unbelievable plot to reintroduce his character Jason Bourne.

Damon stepped aside after starring in three movies when studio executives and director Paul Greengrass fell out over the proposed story line for a fourth film, and Jeremy Renner and director Tony Gilroy replaced the pair in summer hit The Bourne Legacy.

Renner has often hinted at the possibility of teaming his character, Aaron Cross, up with Damon’s Bourne in a future film, but the original franchise star insists the plot of Legacy has ended his involvement in the films for good.

Despite previously stating he would be interested in another Bourne film as long as Greengrass is onboard to direct, Damon now tells Movieline.com, “Because they (writers and Tony Gilroy) use our actors and characters… whatever they said (in Legacy) is true and so we’d have to acknowledge it in any Bourne movie that we’d do.

“That makes it really tough. I don’t think we can do the Dallas (TV drama) it-was-all-a-dream scenario. I don’t think the audience would go for that after they paid money to see a movie.”

Patrick Duffy’s Dallas character, Bobby Ewing, was re-introduced to viewers in 1986 – after leaving the show the previous year – when he stepped out of the shower. His character’s wife, played by Victoria Principal, realised Ewing’s death and everything that had come after it during the previous season had been a dream.

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Matt Damon is set to show off his culinary skills on Tuesday when he takes part in a live TV cook-off for charity.

The Bourne Identity star will swap the film set for the kitchen for the Food Network’s Cooking Live!, on which he will serve as Chef Ming Tsai’s sous chef to help prepare a six course meal.

The event will take place at The Ritz-Carlton hotel in downtown New York to raise funds for the Family Reach Foundation, which aids poverty-stricken families with their medical expenses.

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One of our favorite filmmaking teams has a new project in the works, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Matt Damon and Ben Affleck will reportedly produce a new movie called “Race to the South Pole,” which has Affleck’s brother Casey attached to star.

The film centers on the true life efforts of Robert Falcon Scott and Roald Amundsen to reach the South Pole in the early 1900s. With Scott hailing from England and Amundsen from Norway, the two explorers were, as the title suggests, in a race to see who would reach the mysterious terrain first.

According to THR, Casey’s attached to portray Scott, and Peter Glanz is on board to write the script.

In addition to “Race to the South Pole,” moviemaking pair Damon and Affleck also have a film about Boston gangster Whitey Bulger in the works, which would star Damon and be directed by Affleck.

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