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.

Invictus Trailer

From director Clint Eastwood, 'Invictus' tells the inspiring true story of how Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman) joined forces with the captain of South Africas rugby team, Francois Pienaar (Matt Damon), to help unite their country. Newly elected President Mandela knows his nation remains racially and economically divided in the wake of apartheid. Believing he can bring his people together through the universal language of sport, Mandela rallies South Africas underdog rugby team as they make an unlikely run to the 1995 World Cup Championship match.

Invictus is due out December 11, in time for Oscar consideration.

The poem 'INVICTUS', quoted in the trailer, is by William Ernest Henley, from which Nelson Mandela drew strength while in prison.

"Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul."

Changeling Trailer

Add Clint Eastwood's Changeling to the Oscar mix.