Matt Damon on the training he went through to prepare for Invictus

Awards Daily points to this great article and interview about what Matt Damon went through to prepare for Invictus. As Awards Daily points out, he went from gaining weight for The Informant! to having to bulk up to play the captain of a rugby football team. And in rugby, they don't wear pads like in American football, so he had to be ready for some physical punishment on the field. Matt Damon was amazed that the story of the team captain, Pienaar, and Mendela was true.

But after looking up Pienaar online and seeing photos of him, Damon was also incredulous he'd been asked to play the part. "Clint, this guy is huge," Damon protested. "We've never met, but I'm only 5 foot 10."

Eastwood started to laugh. "Oh hell, don't worry about that," he said composedly. "You go worry about everything else!"

Damon had six months to master an elusive South African accent and pack some new muscle on a frame that – because European rugby is a sport that doesn’t use the protective gear of North American football – would be facing pulverizing punishment on the field. He would be playing a real-life character who, in the course of his career, has broken his nose 14 times and received 400 stitches to his face.

“I had to build myself up to try to pull off the illusion of being the captain of a South African rugby team,” Damon says. “Ultimately, I was trying to look at every possible pitfall: What are the things that could possibly blow this illusion?”

That’s the way Damon works: thinking hard about a role long before he hits the set. “So I kind of made my little checklist of things to do.”

The 39-year-old actor will always remember his first meeting with Pienaar. He and Freeman received an invitation to Pienaar’s house for a gourmet dinner the South African sports icon was cooking himself.

“He invited me to meet his wife and two boys, and Morgan and I went, and I remember I rang the door bell and I looked UP at him! The first thing I ever said to Francois Pienaar in my life was – ‘I look much bigger on film.’ And he laughed and laughed and gave me a big hug and took me into his house, and that was it.

 Read the whole great article here.   I think this is going to be a fantastic holiday film.