Matt Damon recently opened up about the work he did to portray his character in The Rainmaker.
For those unaware, the 55-year-old American actor and film producer played the role of Rudy Baylor, a young attorney and a bartender, in the 1997 legal drama film written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola based on John Grisham’s 1995 novel of the same name.
To promote his forthcoming film The Odyssey, Damon gave an interview to GQ, along with his co-stars Tom Holland and Robert Pattinson, where he reminisced about his role, which he played almost three decades ago.
He told the outlet that he “bartended down in Knoxville, Tennessee to pick up an accent” to play Baylor in The Rainmaker.
“And I did that for, like a month,” the Good Will Hunting star revealed, admitting that his efforts did not go in vain as the film turned out to be “a big break” for him.
Damon shared, “It was in a Francis Ford Coppola movie, and I had a month to kill. And then we were gonna have three weeks of rehearsals in Napa Valley, where [Coppola] lived. And so I went, I moved to Knoxville, and I just told the manager, this woman, I just told her what I was doing … so it was an extra bartender for her at no charge, right?”
“I was like, ‘I’ll give all my tips to these guys, and I just need to be here.’ But if you’re serving drinks to people, they talk to you,” the Interstellar star said.
It is pertinent to mention that Matt Damon is playing the role of Odysseus in the forthcoming new epic fantasy action film written and directed by Christopher Nolan, The Odyssey, which will be out on July 17, 2026. Watch the trailer here.