Every Matt Damon Movie, Ranked By How Gay He Is In Them

And yes, I mean every single one.

Brief programming note: “Every Matt Damon Movie” includes every feature film where Matt Damon is present for more than one scene. Cameos, voiceovers and documentary appearances do not count. TV doesn’t count except for 30 Rock because I like 30 Rock. If you think I missed something, please tell me where you’d rank it in the comments and if it seems gay enough I’ll watch it and add it in.¹

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49. We Bought A Zoo - Benjamin Mee

Matt Damon does not play gay in We Bought A Zoo. 

48. Contagion - Mitch Emhoff

Matt Damon does not play gay in Contagion.

47. Green Zone - Roy Miller

Matt Damon does not play gay in Green Zone, and yes, I did watch through all of Green Zone to confirm this— you know, just in case.

46. The Monuments Men - Lt. James Granger

Matt Damon is so mind-numbingly straight in this movie that he refuses to cheat on his wife with French Cate Blanchett. Come on.

(Additional note: the real woman Cate Blanchett’s character is vaguely based on, Rose Valland, was a lesbian, so I have no idea why there’s a scene where she tries to seduce Matt Damon for no discernible reason. Doesn’t impact the plot, doesn’t impact the character. Best guess is that it’s because George Clooney is a big stupid moron who should not be allowed to continue making movies!!!)

45. Stuck On You - Bob

Matt Damon calls his brother a fag in this.

44. The Last Duel - Sir Jean de Carrouges

Matt Damon does not play gay in this even if allegedly Ben Affleck wanted to kiss him on the lips really bad in it. 

43. Suburbicon - Gardner Lodge

Matt Damon does not play gay in Suburbicon, but he does do a pretty fair Leonardo DiCaprio impression.

42. Downsizing - Paul Safranek

Matt Damon does not play gay in Downsizing. He’s just kind of annoying and pathetic the whole time. And very small, of course. I guess Christophe Waltz kind of seemed like he wanted to fuck Small Matt Damon at certain points, but only in a European way. I’m so mad I had to watch this fucking movie for this listicle. Don’t watch this.

41. Margaret - Aaron Caije

Matt Damon does not play gay in Margaret. Get a job, stay away from her!

40. Saving Private Ryan - Private James Francis Ryan

I know a lot of war movies are really gay, but I just don’t get that vibe from Private James Francis Ryan, sue me.

39. Promised Land - Steve Butler

Matt Damon does not play gay in Promised Land, but I do want to note that this is a seriously underrated Matt Damon performance! He perfectly imitates the extremely imperceptible evil mania brimming under the surface of an Affable Regular Guy. He has a “love interest” in this movie but he had such amazing chemistry with his work bestie Frances McDormand I genuinely spent the entire runtime praying and hoping they would fuck. And that’s coming from me.

38. The Adjustment Bureau - David Norris

Matt Damon does not play gay in The Adjustment Bureau.

37. Elysium - Max

Listen, what do you want me to say? It’s fucking Elysium, man. I could sit here and make some stuff up about his relationship with his dirtbag dead best friend Diego Luna but we both know it’s pointless. As I sat at my laptop watching this movie I began to feel an acute sense of dread, even beyond the boundless rage it was inducing within me. A chill crept up my (sadly non-metal) spine; I felt suddenly quite ill. What was I doing there, I wondered. What was my mission? Why did I choose to do this to myself? For what purpose? What am I trying to prove, and to whom? Maybe I should just kill myself?

36. Courage Under Fire - Ilario

Matt Damon, twink, does not play gay in Courage Under Fire.

35. Stillwater - Bill Baker

Matt Damon does not play gay in Stillwater, but he is a reluctant ally to his lesbian daughter despite it all. Slay I guess.

34. Oppenheimer - Leslie Groves

Can you imagine how crazy it would be if Oppenheimer portrayed real-life US Army Colonel Leslie Groves as gay out of nowhere.

33. The Legend of Bagger Vance - Rannulph Junuh

This is not a real movie. Don’t worry about it. “God bless Savannah and the men she propagates!” is an actual line of dialogue. If Matt’s got massive chronic gayface in this, that’s none of my business.

32. The Rainmaker - Rudy Baylor

Matt Damon plays a straight guy in The Rainmaker, but he has sorta big wet gay eyes about it?

31. Invictus - Francois Pienaar

Thick thighs OUT, bottle blonde, manhandled, panting and sweating, grunting and groaning, clutching the bodies of other men like he’ll die if he has to let go…

…Matt Damon does not play gay in Invictus.

30. The Martian - Mark Watney/The Martian

Matt Damon does not play gay in The Martian… but he doesn’t play straight in it, either. The Martian is a quintessentially nonromantic and nonsexual character, like some sort of friendly robot, or a cute puppy.

29. Air - Sonny Vaccaro 

Nothing gayer than guys who are really into sports. Unfortunately, in Air, Matt Damon portrays real-life heterosexual man Sonny Vaccaro, so I can’t in good conscience include this in the GMDCU. However, Sonny has that hapless and well-meaning but also crushingly empty essence that inhabits so many of Damon’s characters, and has no onscreen relationships with any women whatsoever, and you do get to see him and Affleck share a screen for a bit, always a pleasure, so it’s not an utter disaster for the community. Oh, and the camera really focuses in on Matt’s slightly-larger-than-usual belly, like, a lot. I’m not saying sexually, but, well. 

28. Drive Away Dolls - Senator Gary Channel

Despite genuinely everything about this movie, Matt Damon’s character is not gay in it. He is a repressed senate candidate who once had psychedelics-induced sex with Miley Cyrus and is doing everything he can to retrieve the dildo she cast from his genitalia while this was occurring. Humorously, he has to go to a lesbian bar to try to negotiate for his own dick. This does not go well for him. Would the movie be better if his character was gay and just wanted to collect a briefcase full of dildos for his own nefarious purposes? Why would you ask me that? Is that even a question?

27. School Ties - Charlie Dillon

You go into this thinking it’s gonna fill that Dead Poets Society itch, until tiny baby Matt Damon is yelling racial slurs and fist-fighting Brendan Fraser butt naked in a bathroom, and you’re like, what the fuck is going on? How did anyone ever think this was passably clever commentary on antisemitism? Why is everyone so shirtless all of the time?

26. Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron - Spirit

Matt Damon portrays a heterosexual horse in Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, but I do consider being in this movie allyship.

25. The Bourne Quadrilogy - Jason Bourne

Matt Damon does not play gay in the Bourne movies but halfway through the first one I started imagining the exact same movie except Jason Bourne was a butch lesbian in it and I got so lightheaded I had to sit down. Actually I think the Bourne movies are kind of interesting about masculinity in comparison to other action guy franchises and I’m not sure what it means. 

Because Bourne isn’t your typical action hero, right? He’s deeply haunted, he’s not charismatic, he’s not dropping one-liners or talking about the value of found family. He’s afraid of himself and of what he can do. He hates being an action movie character. He hates his own macho backstory, the violence encoded into his neurons, the way he has no agency over his own body. He’s been designed as a killing machine. The main character beats revolve around that agency— did he choose this for himself? Was he forced? How much of this life did he ever consent to? And can he leave it? He can’t make any choices. Other action leads are heroic guys, they’re leaders, they’re proactive. Bourne is purely reactive. His mind, and his soul, are completely separate entities from his body, and he has a violently disturbed reaction whenever they collide. It is a dysphoric experience, right? In a sense?

…

Oh god, maybe Jason Bourne actually is a butch lesbian?

24. The Good Shepherd - Edward Wilson

Matt Damon is not really gay in The Good Shepherd, but he does drag in it so legally I can’t rank it further down.

The film follows Edward Wilson, who is recruited to join the CIA at its outset. He starts the film at Yale studying poetry; he happily crossdresses for a musical theatre performance, and then joins the Skull and Bones club (I didn’t know this was a real thing, the name is so corny!), where he has to wrestle other men nude in mud while getting pissed on? (This is real!) His induction into heteropatriarchy is arranged when he accidentally impregnates a debutante, despite being in love with another woman; he has no passion for her and immediately abandons her to do spy stuff. His old professor/spy mentor Michael Gambon is killed by his own country for being gay, basically, right in front of him. Thus he is locked into a secretive life of confounding misery in the CIA doing coups and stuff. (Also his spy codename is “Mother”. So true.)

I think this film has some interesting ideas about masculinity that remain somewhat opaque; Edward starts out very comfortable with gender nonconformity, and is then inducted into Good Heterosexual American Patriot WASP Life via rituals that are violent and repressive (his forced marriage), but also homosensual (fraternity hazing), a dissonance that seems to follow him in life and career. It’s all very Roman— power struggles, decadence, humiliation. His life as a spy offers a sort of freedom from that life, but is ultimately used to enact the violent oppressions that destroy both his mentor and his son. He’s haunted and emasculated by his own father’s suicide and failure to devote himself fully to his country— a country that fashions him into a cruel instrument of imperialist power. American masculinity is a horrific prison, basically. The inclusion of gay themes is mostly to elaborate on that point; power struggles between men may be ritualistically homosensual, but the structures of society are hostile to any diversion from the heterosexual plan. Et cetera. But I do think these themes would have been rendered even more interesting if Edward was also gay a bit. C’mon, De Niro. Give it a little more juice.

23. The Instigators - Rory

My first contemporary new-release update to this post! Uh… look, it’s not the flashiest of roles. Rory is a washed up, vaguely suicidal ex-Marine (well, ex-Marine mechanic) who joins a crew of criminals so he can pay his backed-up child support bills. He’s the strong and silent type, studious, reluctant to ever smile or laugh. He’s forced to go on the lam with his wise-cracking alcoholic compatriot, Cobby (Casey Affleck).

Like all buddy comedies, there’s of course a gay potential when the relationship between two guys is the centre of a movie. Cobby gets Rory to open up a little, pokes him annoyingly, and seems earnestly invested in his mental state. Rory can’t even open up to his own therapist, and here he is sharing precious info with… this guy. They go from strangers to sorta friends by the end, and it’s cute. Their aimless bickering as they run around Boston trying to escape the law is the best part of this limply-directed movie. At one point Cobby makes a joke about how he and Rory should get prison married. Your standard fare. But that’s as far as it goes, and Damon really doesn’t get the opportunity to mine for a ton of depth in the performance. The most meaning The Instigators manages to wring out of its characters is when Rory admits to Cobby and his therapist/hostage mid-heist that for the first time in years, he doesn’t want to die. Cute. But pretty weird behaviour on his part— if I was forced to cohabitate with Casey Affleck for 101 minutes, I’d definitely jump off a bridge.

22. Interstellar - Mann

I mean, he could be. 

21. Syriana - Bryan Woodman

I guess in a certain sense “letting your wife leave you because you really, really want to financially advise a sexy Persian prince and tag along on his liberal coup” could be considered a vaguely gay thing to do. 

20. The Zero Theorem - Management

Here is an image of Matt Damon in this movie. I can’t really say whether the character is in any way gay or not, I just think it’s funny.

19. Hereafter - George Lonegan

Matt Damon’s character in this is basically if Rogue from the X-Men was a normal blue collar guy. But instead of killing people when he touches them, he communes with dead people they loved. He even wears silly little gloves about it. “Adult man who is a real psychic but hates it” is actually such a fun character idea that I forgave so much else about this movie. I wanted to see a lot more of him being like, “ugh, it’s not a blessing… it’s a curse…” and looking sweetly sad and freaking out when his hand brushes another person’s. As with so many of Damon’s characters, it would have been better and more thematically rich if George was gay, but alas, we have to watch him feed Bryce Dallas Howard little spoons of things in a cooking class for like 45 minutes. Bonus points for him being super repressed and lonely and not knowing how to touch people without hurting them or himself and being obsessed with British character actor Derek Jacobi, which in some circles is gay enough to count.

18. Good Will Hunting - Will Hunting

I don’t think Will Hunting is gay per se, but I do think Chuckie/Ben Affleck is in love with him very seriously, and has been in love with him for his whole life. The Best Part of My Day speech is in my opinion possibly the most romantic and heartbreaking scene ever written for film and I can’t think about it without crying. Truly the Enjolras and Grantaire of their age.

Bonus trivia: Affleck and Damon did allegedly write a faux sex scene between their two characters as a prank, or something, I don’t know, so maybe that influenced their performances a tiny bit, who’s to say.

17. The Informant! - Mark Whitacre

Gay as hell to be married to Melanie Lynskey and/or criminally insane.

16. The Brothers Grimm - Wilhelm Grimm

When the titular brothers get arrested at the beginning of the movie, one of the charges levied against them is buggery. Damon’s character pulls a face, and does not deny it. There is no additional textual evidence whatsoever, but trust that he maintains a thrillingly foppish bisexual air throughout.

15. 30 Rock - Carol Burnett

Any man who dates Liz Lemon successfully has to be gay because Liz Lemon is transmasculine.

14. The Great Wall - William

Yes, I’m going to seriously engage with The Great Wall for a second. The entire movie you think this guy (can’t remember his name; dubious Irish accent) is having a will-they-won’t-they with the haughty overachiever Chinese general lady, but they keep it professional throughout the medieval alien invasion, and for some reason he gives up a life with her to return home with his mercenary buddy Pedro Pascal, who literally dropped a big pile of bricks on his head Looney Tunes style like twenty minutes ago and left him for dead. What is this relationship? By the way, Tony Gilroy co-wrote this movie. Is he pulling a prank on me? I don’t understand. But then again, maybe I do understand. Fumbling a bad bitch who does spear gymnastics so you can save your toxic sellsword best friend from jail— truly the actions of the gay and deranged!

13. The Ocean’s Trilogy - Linus Caldwell

Gay boy.

12. Thor: Ragnarok & Thor: Love and Thunder - Actor Loki

Technically, as he plays a character who plays the role of Loki (who is, as I am told, “canonically bisexual”), Matt Damon is playing playing gay in these movies. Unsure if this counts as double gay or half gay? Either way I am choosing to interpret this performance as a clever metatextual commentary on the subject of this piece.

11. True Grit - LaBoeuf

Actually, yeah. Fuck it. LaBoeuf is gay. He’s doing a whole enemies-to-lovers shared custody thing with Jeff Bridges and it’s awesome. What if we were both cowboy rangers in pursuit of the same criminal and we had to fight over the affections of our adopted daughter and we were both boys (old men). This is the secret even better movie hidden beneath this already really good movie. And he’s wearing decorative spurs and has his masculinity questioned in the first five minutes of his appearance, so you know he means business. And that business? Fucking men. 

10. All The Pretty Horses - John Grady

In 1998, Matt Damon, fresh off the success of Good Will Hunting, was about to begin filming on two movies in quick succession— first, The Talented Mr. Ripley, then All The Pretty Horses. Meanwhile, Gus van Sant was in early development on a little film, practically unheard of, called Brokeback Mountain. He called up Damon to play one of the lead roles, ideally with Joaquin Phoenix starring opposite him. Speaking in interviews later, Damon paraphrased his reaction at the time: “Gus, I’m going to do a gay movie, then a cowboy movie. I can’t follow it up with a gay-cowboy movie!”

Halfway through All The Pretty Horses, Damon’s character is stuck in a cell alongside his closest friend from back home, and they’re both spiralling. Damon says, “I wouldn’t quit you. I wouldn’t care what you did.” His friend pauses, and says, choked up, “I’d never quit you.”

This is the movie he turned down Brokeback Mountain for.

The film follows two sensitive white boys who ride down to Mexico to steal jobs. It opens on a shot of them stargazing and waxing philosophical about the nature of heaven and hell. Normal. Just two normal, straight guys. Anyway, some hijinks occur, they get a job on a ranch, Damon’s character John gets romantically involved with a young Penélope Cruz and they have no chemistry so don’t worry about it, and then everything pops off when our two cowboys get sent to jail for no reason. His buddy gets stabbed immediately and appears to die in John’s arms. John then gets suicidally reactive about it and also gets stabbed. Don’t worry, they’re both fine and get set free! But his friend goes back to Texas because he can’t deal with all this drama.

John knows his love for Cruz is forbidden and they leave one another solemnly. He spends the remainder of the film risking tooth and nail, nearly dying, to retrieve his buddy’s horse from police custody. The film ends with him bloodied and shot, returning to Texas, and having an emotionally charged reunion with his platonic cowboy bestie who just can’t quit him. Here is your platonic horse gift for experiencing The Horrors with me. I can only presume they subsequently moved to Vermont and started a bed-and-breakfast. Because they’re just two guys. Normal guys. The normalest guys I know.

9. Ford v Ferrari - Carroll Shelby

I don’t give a fuck that these were real heterosexual people. This movie is the closest straight male culture can get to approximating full-on yaoi. These guys are constructing intricate rituals. These guys are wed by their naturally erotic need for speed. They’re the only people who understand each other. They’re old pals. They need each other. They trust one another implicitly and put their lives in each other’s hands. When Shelby bets his whole company on Miles’ win. When Miles trusts Shelby and slows down and sacrifices Le Mans for it. When they start just kicking the shit out of each other. The way Shelby looks worse for wear after Miles’ death than Miles’ wife does. The shot at the end where we just hang on Matt Damon sobbing in his car for a bit— that’s pure hot concentrated yaoi cinema. 

8. Rounders - Mike McDermott

Do you know how many times poker is compared metaphorically to gay sex in Rounders? I lost track. Poker in this film is basically conceptualized as something akin to the homosexuality of ancient Rome— a general act of depravity to be indulged in only lightly, mildly misogynistic in origin, but only really scorn-worthy if you’re not on top.

Mike is a reformed gambling addict now on the straight and narrow; he’s in law school, he has a loving girlfriend who made him give up the game. But his old childhood best friend Worm (played by pitch-perfect beat dog Edward Norton) rolls back into town and quickly sucks him back in to his quick-and-dirty lifestyle. They were the only non-trust fund kids at private school and grew up getting beat up by their parents and their classmates, pulling scams on the rich and forming an immutable bond through degenerately gambling like perverted freaks. This bond is so strong that Mike’s lame girlfriend leaves him in the first act of the movie because Worm is, uh, influencing him. Yet he barely cares about this. He cares about Worm, enough to forgive his constant transgressions and sacrifice everything to pay off his debts for him. What fanfic bullshit is this? There’s even an incredible exchange where Mike jokes that Worm turned gay in prison and Worm says, “In your dreams, lover.” Okay! Of course, Worm ends up being just too pathetic and stupid to live (it’s implied he may be genuinely suicidal) and Mike has to break it off for his own well-being, but it’s given a hell of a lot more emotional prominence than the breakup with his girlfriend. I love toxic codependent freaks who enable each other. This is my Goldfinch. 

Weirdly, the movie doesn’t see gambling itself as wrong— just gambling badly. It’s fuck or get fucked. It ends with Mike winning big against his mob-boss opponent (played by John Malkovich wielding truly the most insane movie accent ever), amicably saying farewell to his ex, quitting law school, and triumphantly heading to Vegas to make it on the professional poker scene. Gambling addiction is freaking awesome, you guys. It’s the kind of lowkey irresponsible but also sort of amazing filmmaking decision that could only be made in the 90s. (We do not hear from Worm, but presumably he is making some bad decisions in a gas station bathroom somewhere.)

Verdict: homophobically gay. 

7. Gerry - Gerry

Watching the ending of Gerry is like… are they about to kiss right now? Are they about to FUCK right now? Oh— oh he’s strangling him. Okay, never mind. 

“This movie is a metaphor for being in the closet and barring the doors until you fucking die/kill the part of you that’s gay.” — A thing I could theoretically say. Let’s all get really into Gerry. 

6. Dogma - Loki

Firmly, Matt Damon as Loki the fallen angel starring against his fellow angel Ben Affleck is about as gay as every other piece of media about fallen angels, which is to say, very. They even experience that trope where everyone assumes they’re in love because they’ve been hanging out together for millennia and never leave each other’s side and they caused one another’s banishments from heaven, and they’re like, uh, we’re not gay, we’re just really repressed sexless beings who care about each other a lot, it’s different. I’m being told through my earpiece that this is Neil Gaiman’s fault somehow (he’s actually credited in the special thanks). Um, they want to fuck each other!! 

(Related content.)

5. The Departed - Colin Sullivan

Colin Sullivan is a southie. Colin Sullivan is a statie, is a cop. A good cop, too. A good criminal, too. What’s the difference. Colin Sullivan is a tough guy, smart kid, he’s a worker. Colin Sullivan hates a fucking firefighter, thinks they’re all a bunch of homos and whatever the fuck. Colin Sullivan lets himself get caught ogling the secretaries. Colin Sullivan isn’t a kid from the projects, he’s a detective, he’s a spy. He’s pretty fucking good at lying. He’s going to law school. He’s got a nice apartment with a good view of the State House Dome. He hangs mirrors on the walls. No point in looking at anything else. When you decide to be something, Colin thinks, you can be it.

Colin Sullivan has a girlfriend. Not a houseguest, a girlfriend. Colin Sullivan gets pussy, drinks beer, go Sox. Colin Sullivan can’t get it up. It’s not that weird. Happens to plenty of guys. Colin’s cock is definitely working, it’s working overtime! Colin can perform. When’s he not performing? Isn’t everybody? Colin Sullivan’s boss tells him to get a wife, look the part, don’t want anyone thinking you’re a homo. Colin kisses his girlfriend, makes her laugh, like a human being might do. Colin calls other guys pussies and sissies and homos and faggots, mile-a-minute. Blow me! Fuck yourself! Boston! Colin goes dead-eyed sometimes and stares at the ceiling. Colin’s at the adult theatre to meet his dad. He looks at the bodies writhing on the screen. Doesn’t like seeing it all plain like that. 

Colin Sullivan doesn’t have a father. Well, he does, maybe. Some might see it that way. Your father’s not meant to hurt you, though. Colin Sullivan loves his father. Colin Sullivan kills his father. Rat begets rat; so it goes. 

But another city, I was thinking that, says Colin Sullivan, in the middle of the night. Another city. (A clean slate, says his girlfriend.) I want you to know, you don’t gotta stay. If we’re not gonna make it, it’s gotta be you that gets out, because I’m not capable. I’m fucking Irish. I’ll deal with something being wrong for the rest of my life.

Colin Sullivan is a rat. Colin’s a coward. Colin has a dream that he was dead. Colin was always going to die. The moment he got tapped on the shoulder it was over, all those years ago. There’s an X on the floor, on the wall. He’s gotten pretty good at not seeing them. He’s known something’s wrong his whole life, somewhere inside. Colin Sullivan doesn’t give much of a shit anymore about that. He can’t have a life, a real life, not a guy like him. Fake life, sure, and make it shiny. Because no one gives it to you. You have to take it. 

But better just to pretend. 

4. Happy Feet 2 - Bill the Krill

Yes, Matt Damon plays a gay krill in Happy Feet 2 who is in love with Brad Pitt (also gay krill) and I can’t believe I’m saying this but it’s actually very sweet and I also can’t believe I personally skipped through Happy Feet 2 to confirm this. 

3. Behind the Candelabra - Scott Thorson

Diversity win! Real-life man Scott Thorson is bisexual! Do you want to see 40-year-old Matt Damon play a cherubic 18-year-old boytoy by way of an obvious blurry face filter wearing a sparkly speedo looking like his only coherent thought is “I’m gonna fuck that old man” while staring wantonly at Michael Douglas at his absolute most decrepit? Do you want to see him successfully fuck that old man? Of course you do. You’re a human being. This film was deemed “too gay to release” and had to be shoved onto HBO instead. And honestly, would we settle for less in a movie about Liberace? 

What I will say about this film is that although Douglas pretty fearlessly mindmelds with the ghost of Liberace, there is something a little strange about Damon’s performance as Thorson— a certain uncanniness about how he engages with gay culture and mannerisms. Maybe it’s that he’s forty and this is the first time he’s played a textually gay character since Tom Ripley. But whenever he calls Liberace an old queen (and rest assured, he does this several times), he seems to shy away from reaching full cattiness potential, like he’s nervous he’s being too stereotypical about it. Don’t worry, Matt! You’re doing fine! Try out a little lisp, we won’t be mad at you!

2. The Talented Mr. Ripley - Tom Ripley

When I watched The Talented Mr. Ripley for the first time, I was living in my father’s basement. It was a small room almost entirely filled up with a bed. I was desperately looking for an apartment and a job and failing miserably at both. There was nowhere else for me to go. I had no friends and no life and I couldn’t stand my situation. I felt like a boiling frog. I was horribly angry at my father for being my only option for refuge, for expecting me to be happy about winding up there; I performatively cried every single night, sobbing louder and louder— what, to see if anyone would notice? To make them feel bad? I felt too afraid to contact my online therapist because I was petrified someone would hear what I was saying through the walls. I became shrivelled and heartless and cruel. I was so desperately, hopelessly alone, and quite sincerely felt I was doomed to it. I hated that basement room, but I couldn’t stand to leave it, either.

The Talented Mr. Ripley didn’t make me feel any better— actually, I had delirious visions of a Matt Damon-shaped sleep paralysis demon all night and was so unsettled I failed a job interview the next morning— but it did make me feel understood, at a moment in time where that was all I craved. I was weak, and I was covetous, and I was guilty, and I was afraid. What happens to want when it can’t go anywhere, when there’s nowhere to put it? What happens when you want everything? There was light, somewhere, and people who loved me, and money and comfort, and a place I could be all on my own. But I couldn’t touch it. I was stuck in that basement. Maybe I’d been stuck there for a long, long time— maybe even since I was a kid.  

It’s the small things that really make this version of Tom Ripley. When he brings Shakespeare to Italy but no clothes. When he spends weeks encyclopedically learning about jazz before ever meeting Dickie or seeing his face. When he smells Dickie’s armpit. When he sings My Funny Valentine, knowing Dickie sang it to woo Marge. When he weeps at the opera. When he gives away the key. 

The thing about Matt Damon’s performance in this movie is that it’s perfect? It feels like magic. It feels like heterosexual Matt Damon has been possessed by an actual spirit. Every emotion is violent and screaming and shoved down. It’s all there, plastered all over his face, thoughts blaring out of his eyes, you can see every shift, all the humiliation and yearning and wanting and congealed bitterness and hatred and curdled love. It’s the only way to adapt Tom’s mile-a-minute inner monologue from the book, and he does it with his face alone. And the fear! Show me another performance that is so quintessentially, powerfully afraid. His tortured psyche holds desire and violence as equally disturbed impulses, fracturing and leaking out in tandem, impossible to detangle. He’s an open wound and a cracked mirror. He steals Dickie’s too-sharp smile and bored eyes. He seems to shift in size, grow a few inches. Every feeling he’s ever had is coiled in his body, in the way he moves. He’s a chameleon. He’s a fraud. He’s a little boy, cold and alone. He’s a strangler. He’s a pansy. He’s a tourist. He’s hungry for something, but it’s hard to say what.

Damon’s so fearless here. Maybe he was cavalier at the time about being in a gay movie, but there’s nothing shy about the performance, it looks totally effortless, and without flinching away from the erotic or the embarrassing, it’s played with a rich empathy and candor (and dare I say it, a very real and true gay sensibility!). He melts into Tom, lets him take over completely. When I say there aren’t queer characters like Tom Ripley anymore, I’m not really being literal (they rebooted him last month!); there are plenty of crazy evil gays out there to suit anyone’s fancies. But none of them haunt me the same way. None of them feel so full. When it hurts to want, but you can’t stop, can’t help yourself. When reaching out your hand to touch someone feels like dying. When something went wrong, at some distant point, and now you’re trapped in a labyrinth of your own creation, running just to keep yourself alive. When I feel like that, I think about Tom, like some kind of insane gay fallen angel on my shoulder, giving me therapeutic advice like, let go of the past. Don’t give up. Try identity theft. Trust in the universe and it will provide. Sell somebody else’s boat. Murder is awesome, and you are valid! 

Actually, I still live in a basement. I’m on my own now, but not so alone. I still feel like I’m learning how to be a real person. I’m not sure if that’s meaningfully different than pretending to be one. But enough about me, this is about Matt Damon. And yes, this is of course his gayest performance. Pretty difficult to contest. Just think about him smelling Dickie’s armpit again. Really marinate in that for a sec. Okay, moving on. 

1. Matt Damon In Real Life

Which could mean nothing. 

Just kidding. I know full well that Matt Damon’s straight. Like one of the straightest guys ever, and very comfortable in that. Insert Ben Affleck joke. I swear I’ll restrain myself, from that at least. 

Matt Damon has an interesting spot in The Culture. He’s a bankable™ leading™ man™! He’s an action hero, an Oscar winner, a movie star! He’s a lapsed Crypto bro, a prodigy, a good Boston boy, an “activist”, a 90’s icon. He’s worked with every director under the sun. He’s had flops, sure, but he’s swung more hits than misses. You look at him, you think: competent, white bread, good guy, protagonist, charming but not too charming. And throw in a couple of weirdo roles here and there, why not.

After watching his entire filmography this is no longer my instinctual take. That’s one of two main Damon Modes— the Good Solid Bloke. And that encompasses most of his big hits: The Martian, Oppenheimer, Air, Contagion, We Bought a Zoo, etc. These fellas might have their quirks, but they’re dependable, regular everymen who are normal and care about people. Damon can do these roles in his sleep, and look, he’s good at it.

On the other side of the ring there’s the Normal Guy (Unless!)— these are characters that appear regular and affable on the outside, who have carefully crafted a shell of normalcy to mask some inner darkness/fear/cruelty/addiction/derangement. Think Ripley, The Departed, The Good Shepherd, Suburbicon, The Informant!. These roles are where Damon really shines as an actor, in my opinion. He does mania very well, and guilt, and fear. He’s good at looking like he’s got a soul-churning secret, or a void in his soul. These roles are also what got me interested in keeping an eye out for gay expression in Damon’s performances, whether purposeful or subtextual or completely unintentional. Something about his projected white-bread straight dude public image makes his characters seem even gayer in contrast, somehow. I don’t know how else to say it, he’s really great at acting closet-y!

What draws him to those types of roles is probably what draws any actor to those types of roles, which is to say, it enriches any performance to act like you have a secret. Being a Good Solid Bloke all the time can’t be much fun! Even his Action Movie Franchise role, Jason Bourne, isn’t your typical action movie guy, he’s got a lot going on under the surface! He actively strains against being an action movie guy! Which is why I feel like some of these films can resonate as queer even when textually they might be anything but. It’s that odd contrast he taps into, his innate “normality” tipping over, that wobble. And when you compare him to similar bankable leading man contemporaries— DiCaprio, Pitt, Affleck— he does actually take on more queer roles, which is interesting! One thing about Matt Damon is he’s gonna take some weird little swings, and he’s gonna make some choices, and you gotta respect that. And, to conclude my months of research, sometimes those choices are gonna be a little gay! 

Was I insane for doing all this? Yes. Did I have to watch days worth of garbage for essentially no reason? Yes.

Maybe the real Gay Matt Damon was the friends we made along the way: Steven Soderbergh. Jason Bourne’s awesome German rave girl GF. The rat at the end of The Departed. The Iraq War. Lee Pace. The f-slur. Derek Jacobi. Fracking. Lesbian Amanda Knox. Cormac McCarthy. J Smith Cameron’s boobs. Big ol’ American flags. The kid from We Bought a Zoo who got expelled for drawing fucked up anime fanart. Kevin Smith. Firemen getting pussy for the first time in the history of fire or pussy. And, of course, Marge. 

1. If you disagree with any of these placements, please comment or contact me detailing your complaints, and I will psychosexually battle you for dominance over the computer.